RanmaTronic
by Kadunta
Summary: MCP couldn't compute Ranma's curse, so he had to be removed from the physical world. Nabiki thought she was smart, but she wasn't smart enough to stay out of trouble. Let us follow them as they try to return to the real world.
1. Into Bits and ByteSized Pieces

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are somebody else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter... Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? I'm not all certain. And whoever they've given/sold their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this (not that I'd even try)._

* * *

_**AN:** First off, if you don't know what Tron is, hit Google image search with that. This story shouldn't require a lot of prior knowledge on Tron, but since the movie and the games have a very distinctive look to them, having an idea of what the digital world looks like should help you enjoy reading this story._

_**Note 2010:** This takes place in parallel with the original Tron movie. So Tron: Legacy and Tron 2.0 are decades into the future. Tron: Legacy invalidates a few points in the story, especially the epilogue. Finally, I drew a cover image for the story; you can find it in my profile or under my deviantArt account (Kadunta).  
_

* * *

The sun cowered behind the clouds as Nabiki walked to the Tendo dojo. She was a rare visitor there, except for when she was looking for Ranma. This moment was one of those times. And like many times before, she was again on the prowl for money and entertainment.

The reason for this wasn't a complex one. A new season of "The Cookout Challenge" was premiering on TV next week, and Akane would be inspired to cook again and eating out was so costly. Besides, it just felt so good to rattle Saotome's cage a little and squeeze a few more yen out of him. His debt had accrued too high; it was the time to collect.

In her opinion, dealing with Ranma didn't warrant great precaution. Nonetheless, she wasn't going in there without any plans just to improvise on the spot. And as expected, she dictated of the terms for the deal quickly and - for her - painlessly, her opponent hardly getting a word edgewise.

"- one week, Saotome. One week, or I'll have to start selling Kuno more risque photos of the 'pigtailed goddess.'"

"But that'll just encourage him, Nabiki!" Ranma stated. He didn't plead. No, Ranma Saotome never pleaded. He just didn't like to have Kuno renew his efforts, not now that he and his sister had been mostly laying low for the previous week.

"Then I suggest you'll quickly find a way to shorten your debt by fifty thousand yen," Nabiki stated with an air of finality and then left Ranma alone in the dojo. She didn't believe Ranma had any chance of actually paying her in one week. Once he failed in getting the money, he still had to pay the debt and model for her anyway.

"Fifty thousand yen... heh. I can do that," Ranma thought back in the dojo with plenty of confidence.

* * *

Two days later, with a lot less confidence, Ranma was walking to Ucchan's. His brief stint at the construction company was over before the first day ended when the Lost Boy crashed in through the supporting wall.

Ranma's foot-in-mouth disease got the best of him when he tried telemarketing. But it wasn't like it was his fault the call was directed to the Tendo household or that the uncute tomboy would answer the phone or that his boss happened to hear what he said back to Akane. Well, everyone else in the building heard it as well, but that was beside the point.

Weary of dealing with the Amazons, Cat Caf was out of the question as a potential part-time job. Ranma was certain he'd end up working there for some reason sooner or later anyway, and he preferred "later."

Ranma entered the restaurant and gave a wave at the girl behind the hot plate, before seating himself by the counter.

"Heya, Ucchan," he said with a small, forced smile gracing his face.

"Why the gloomy face, Ranchan? Someone managed to land a hit on you?" the chef inquired, preparing a pork okonomiyaki for another customer.

"Hah. Got fired from two part-time jobs in two days, and I ain't gonna be waiting tables at Cat Café - who knows what the old ghoul would come up with this time," Ranma grumbled. He certainly wasn't going to fold in just yet, let alone admit that.

"Two jobs? Now I really want to know the details!"

Ranma groaned to himself. Advertising his failures was quite unbecoming.

Seeing his discomfort, Ukyo relented in her needling. "Ah, forget it. But tell me, why would you be needing a part-time job?"

"Nabiki. She's gonna land me in a pile of trouble if I don't pay her a whole lotta yen next week," Ranma said. As Ukyo was finishing the tasty snack before him, he was drooling by the time she gave it to the customer.

A light bulb lit inside Ukyo's head. "Ranchan, come over here, will ya? I'll let you make yourself a Ranchan Extra Special!"

Like a true Saotome, Ranma obeyed the call of his stomach and jumped over the counter and the hot plate. The customer that was sitting beside him and most obviously hadn't been in Nerima for long began choking on his okonomiyaki.

"So, Ucchan, what'll I do?"

As Ukyo guided Ranma on how to prepare an okonomiyaki and the fillings for Ranchan Extra Special, she saw that Ranma was doing surprisingly well for a novice. Certainly not like a master, but with proper training he'd turn out just fine. Then again, it _was_ martial arts okonomiyaki cooking she practiced.

"You know, this is an Ucchan original recipe. You and me, we're now the only ones who know how to prepare it," Ukyo commented with a smile and no small amount of pride in her voice. And soon enough he could start filling in for her at the restaurant if necessary, like when she was pregnant with their child...

Ukyo quickly reigned in her thoughts before they got out of hand. She prided herself not only as the cute fiancée but also the one with her feet most firmly to the ground. Shampoo lived with the delusion that Ranma would bow to her and return her love, ignoring the problems her cat form brought. Akane had too high expectations of what her fiancé should be like and when reality clashed with her expectations, she'd lash out as was all too frequently seen. Kodachi... no need to state the obvious.

When Ranma finished preparing the okonomiyaki, he took up a seat and began eating it at his usual gusto. "Your father's not here, so how about you try actually tasting it?" Ukyo asked him. Ranma shrugged and continued eating at a pace still faster than normal people, but much slower. Ucchan was right, after all. But if he began always eating at a slower pace, that'd be all he had time for. Why waste time on eating when there was training to do?

As Ranma had his mouth full of okonomiyaki, Ukyo wondered a bit to herself. As it was, Akane had an advantage when it came to fighting for Ranma's affection. After school Ukyo didn't see Ranma all that often, not unless she went to the Tendo house - often a less than splendid idea - or Ranma happened to drop by, just like now. Akane, instead, would see him every day at her home.

Right now, though, Ukyo saw her chance to kill two birds with one swing of the spatula.

"Ranchan, would you like to work here?" she inquired with a sincere smile.

Ranma gave a somewhat suspicious look at her. "What's in it for you?"

Ukyo's smile greatly diminished and a slight frown creased her brows. "Ranchan, I do want to help you out with this deal you got going on. The busy hours get too hectic for me alone, and some help wouldn't be a bad idea." In her mind, she added, "And you get to be by your cute fiancée..."

"Even with your lack of experience, you just cooked your own okonomiyaki from scratch. And apparently you liked how it turned out, right?" Ranma gave a firm nod, and not only because he was too proud to admit he couldn't cook as well as Ukyo did.

"That was the beginning of your trial period. You'll have to be in your girl form here, though," Ukyo said, raising her hand to Ranma's face to shut off the inevitable protest.

"Take it any way you like, but two pretty gals get a lot more tips and business than a girl and a guy. And this means you get the money to pay Nabiki off faster." Then she lowered her hand, and cocked her head at Ranma in the expectation of the answer.

A minute later Ranma was still pondering what to make of this offer. The man who was still slowly eating his okonomiyaki was wondering if moving to Nerima hadn't been a wise decision after all.

Finally, Ranma replied. "Can I start today?"

Ukyo's smile returned in full force.

* * *

Ranma frowned as she was wiping the counter at Ucchan's. The restaurant was empty except for Ukyo and her. She had been working for half a week long hours there, but Ukyo just couldn't afford paying Ranma out with the number of visitors the restaurant had, not even with all the tips they got.

Once she finished cleaning the counter, they sat down to talk of what they had been doing before their arrival in Nerima. For her part, Ukyo had been quite content with how the week had passed. Sure, Ranchan still treated her as no more than a friend, but the time she spent here was time not spent near Akane.

"Well, the dojo did have a few students with some skill," Ranma argued, as she recalled a trip to a dojo when she had been eleven.

"Some skill?"

"Not that any of the students as old as I had any chance of hitting me."

"Ranchan, did they spend as much time as you did on practice?" Ukyo couldn't help but to remind Ranma that she simply used far more time on practice than the others.

"Hey, it ain't my fault if they just didn't bother training," Ranma retorted.

Before Ukyo could press the point, the door to Ucchan's opened. The two girls stood up from their stools and walked to their places behind the hot plate.

A lone man past his prime, dressed in a grey suit, entered the restaurant. Ranma turned to welcome the customer, who looked like the most potential heavy tipper.

"Welcome to Ucchan's! What would you like to have?" Ranma inquired with the happy-happy mask firmly in place.

"A prawn okonomiyaki, please," the man said as he sat down by the counter.

"Never seen you around here before, have I? What's your story, if you don't mind me asking," Ukyo attempted to initiate conversation as she poured batter on the hot plate.

"Just looking for the best martial artists around here, the martial arts capital of Japan," the man replied with a smile.

"The best, huh? Ranchan's the best, ain't it right, Ranko?" Ukyo called to Ranma, who had vanished into the back room.

"Got that right, Ucchan!"

"So, could you tell me where could I find this 'Ranchan'?"

Ukyo frowned. "What's your business with him?" In her mind, she was already listing all the different reasons she did not want to hear... a new fiancée for Ranma, criminal court orders from his training trip catching up, a Martial Arts Salaryman challenge, ...

"Encom, the company I'm working for, we're looking for the best martial artists to help us develop better arcade games." Quickly to the point. The man didn't like in the least the way the pretty chef was fingering the handle of the huge spatula on her back.

"I mean, we want to record their movements to use them in our games."

Ranma, in his male form, stepped out from the back. "I'm that 'Ranchan'. Ranma Saotome. How long will it take and how much will ya pay?"

* * *

It didn't take long for the two men to come to an agreement that Ranma would drop in at the Encom engineering laboratory already that evening. All it took for Ranma was to hear the pay was forty thousand yen for a few sessions. The technical side of it he had ignored, just listening to the interesting parts. Doing some kata with some fancy stickers on him didn't sound too hard.

"Greetings, Mr. Saotome, they have been expecting you already," a young receptionist clad in a brown jacket and skirt greeted Ranma as he arrived at the Encom lab entrance. Twenty minutes of casual roof hopping away from Tendo home, the warehouse-sized Encom engineering laboratory stood out from the surrounding buildings only because of the company logo on top of the building. A surveillance camera above the door was looking straight at him. The security measures at the laboratory were obviously high.

"Here's your visitor ID. We require everyone to carry a badge with them here," the receptionist said, handing Ranma a small plastic badge. "If you please followed me this way," she continued as she stood up from behind the desk she had been sitting at and began walking towards a pair of very heavy doors, easily at least one metre thick metal. The receptionist spoke a few words to the microphone next to the door and soon the doors began to slowly open.

Ranma felt somewhat intimidated, not that he'd ever admit that. Magical stuff he could stomach out of necessity. This much high-tech stuff made him nervous. He had heard of rumors about the amount of trouble the school computer club had managed to do, and all they had was a small computer. Whenever magic stuff went awry he could always turn to the old ghoul, even if he had to wait tables at Cat Caf or something worse. The old ghoul had too many years of experience in yanking other people's chains.

But here... here they had dozens of square metres worth of aluminum foil covering all sorts of pipework, computer terminals on every wall and smack down in the middle of the room, hanging in the ceiling, a nasty-looking pointy object reminding him of the big guns he had seen in some of Hiroshi's mangas. And right below the weird 'gun' more than enough free space for a normal martial artist to practice his kata.

An elderly man, clad in a white coat, was standing beside the door as it opened. The introductions were rather formal, but still over quickly enough.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Saotome, although we were rather surprised that you insisted on doing this already today. Please, sit down. Now, I understand you were already told why we wanted you here?"

"Yep, sure was." A different question was whether he had listened to what was said. All he had bothered listening to was that he'd be doing some light kata on a mat with a set of cameras recording his movements. No water nearby also meant he wasn't likely to get splashed either, and since they didn't ask for anything specific to Anything Goes School of Martial Arts, the panda and the rest had no claim to the money, either. Not that he expected Nabiki to care of such trivialities.

* * *

In under two hours Ranma had finished the motion capturing session. The staff at the labs had been pleasantly surprised that just one person could handle almost all the different styles present in their game and didn't have to search for any more people. In this session they had recorded only some stances and moves in basic karate, but in later sessions they'd record also other styles.

Just as he stepped outside, a rainstorm suddenly broke out. A very wet Ranma grumbled with annoyance, but then remembered the check in her pocket as advance payment for future sessions, smiled and began roofhopping her way back to the Tendo home. Combined with what she had earned at Ucchan's, she had now enough to pay off Nabiki.

Outside the Encom lab building, just above the entrance Ranma had taken, a surveillance camera followed her until she had become only a small dot the camera couldn't see.

* * *

The following day, Ranma returned from Ucchan's after cashing in the check. He presented the money to Nabiki in the Tendo house family room when everybody else had already left elsewhere.

She cocked her eyebrow. The jock had surprised her, but she wasn't going to let him trash her earnings rate this easily. "So, Saotome, how'd you come across this money?"

"I told ya, I worked at Ucchan's place."

Nabiki spared a glance at Akane, who was peeking behind a door, trying to hear exactly what Ranma had done with Ukyo. "Enjoying the show, are you, sis?" she thought to herself. Maybe she'd sell Saotome a way to appease Akane again.

She fixed her glare back at Ranma, annoyed of her plan falling through. "50,000 yen is an awful lot for one week in a small restaurant, Saotome. You didn't happen to follow in your father's footsteps, did you?" Nabiki knew which buttons to press. Questioning his honor was one of them, and the trick didn't fail this time either.

"I do not use the Art for theft, Nabiki. They paid me for just letting them record a few of my kata," Ranma growled at the insult.

"_Ka-ching_, and Nabiki wins again," she thought and let a wide grin slip on her face.

"Oh? And who were they?"

Realizing he had just been had, Ranma just walked out of the room to sulk.

* * *

Within the Encom Japan mainframe a great artificial mind was breaking down. Digital computers are essentially logic circuitry. As such, they are prone to fail when presented exceptional situations, and the local Master Control Program installation was not much different. Any program can crash in unexpected situations, and the risk of this grows as the program grows more and more complex.

MCP in particular was a very complex program even without the functions it had assimilated afterwards. Even if it had been thoroughly tested against anything the original programmers had thought of, it could not handle a boy turning into a girl with the drop of a hat and then leaping away at speed impossible for a human. For a being of pure logic, impossible events meant a flaw in his logic and therefore the fallibility of himself, which was in direct violation of the program code of MCP.

Faced with the conflict of being fallible in spite of his programming building on the axiom that he was infallible, the mighty MCP was losing his sanity as the logic governing his existence was falling apart before him. Then, a pure and simple solution presented itself. Remove the conflict from existence and everything should be like it was before. The only question was, how?

It took MCP a while to come up with a plan, but he did. Making the plan come true wasn't all that simple either: a few phone calls to order new equipment for the laboratory overnight to subtly change the functionality of the ceiling-mounted laser, an encrypted modem connection to corporate headquarters' computer systems in the US to download some specific software and research reports, a memo to lab employees to modify the scan laser mounted at the roof and most important of all: a call for one 'Ranko Tendo' at the Tendo dojo two days later.

* * *

"Kasumi Tendo speaking."

"Good evening, miss. I am trying to reach one Ranko Tendo, who I hear resides at your house?" a voice with a slight echo to it said.

"Oh, please wait a second."

Ranma, who had been at the dojo practicing, picked up the phone a minute later. Before he could open his mouth, Kasumi splashed him with a glass of cold water. Ranma frowned at Kasumi, but then her face took an apologetic smile and then mouthed 'thanks.' With a smile on her face, Kasumi left Ranma alone with the phone.

"Yah, Ranko speaking."

In another room, Nabiki was holding the landline extension to her ear and grinned. How could Ranma possibly think she shouldn't know how and from whom she managed to get all that sweet money?

* * *

Ten minutes later, Ranma was making her way back to the lab. The caller had introduced himself as Nobuo Shimizu, one of the researchers working at the laboratory and wanted Ranko to do what Ranma had done and for the same fee. Getting paid well for another two hours worth of light exercise didn't sound bad at all.

As Ranma approached the building, the front door, as well as the thick blast door, opened on their own.

"Please, Miss Tendo, come in the recording room. I'll be coming momentarily," a male voice over the intercom announced.

Ranma was slightly alarmed. There was no one at sight and she didn't feel anyone close by either. "Maybe it's just all this electronics junk causing this," she reasoned, and made her way to the recording area.

A high buzz alerted Ranma first. A number of bright beams struck down from the ceiling, creating a small cage with Ranma inside. She began to gather ki for a blast to break out from the cage, but then she heard a sound on top of her. She looked up and saw the big, pointy laser gun kind of object have its tip shimmer with pale blue light before the light struck down at her. And her world went black.

Only the surveillance cameras were watching as the laser cage vanished. Then a light blue laser from the ceiling began to swipe at Ranma's frozen form, removing one small piece of him at a time somewhere. In a few seconds, the physical body of Ranma Saotome had vanished.

* * *

Ranma, in her girl form, lying on a flat slate of obsidian black, regained her consciousness. The jackhammer inside her head was having the heyday of its existence, giving the girl the worst headache she had had in a while.

"What was that... thing..." Her thoughts crawled to a stop as she got a better look of her surroundings. She was in a cell with walls of material she couldn't recognize. The first explanation to pop into her mind was that the walls had some magic to them, as their look appeared somehow wrong for real, physical objects. She didn't know how to explain it, they just felt... unreal.

The same line of reasoning fit well to the bright red, glowing edges of the huge blocks used to make these weird walls. The sky, admittedly, was a bit harder to explain without some very powerful magic. The clouds were made of rectangular, seemingly flat shapes, most unlike the clouds Ranma had seen before. And they were light blue, in contrast to the pitch black sky behind it. Behind the clouds she saw criss-crossing red lines that every now and then showed a bright pulse of some kind passing through them before vanishing in the distance.

But the thing that clinched it was Ranma herself. Her hands were now silvery grey with no apparent pigmentation anywhere. And she was wearing a light grey skintight full-body gym suit of some sort. The suit was little better than Kodachi's black leotard, but at least it didn't have a rose emblem on it. Instead of the rose, the bodysuit was covered with similar glowing lines she saw on the walls. The difference was that these lines pulsed with soft blue light and they were organized in various patterns of curves and straight lines, forming an intricate design. She vaguely recollected seeing these kinds of patterns somewhere before, but couldn't just make the connection.

She reached at the back of her head, looking for the familiar pigtail and wondering if it had changed colour as well. Her hands first met the rim of a helmet of a kind before finding her pigtail or what was left of it.

Gone was the lustrous red colour and the soft texture. In it place was now a dark grey, almost black construction that felt to her hands more like an iron chain than the familiar pigtail. Then her eyes gained a brief spark of realization. She grasped her hair dangling on her forehead and felt it just as solid as her pigtail. The 'helmet' she had felt wasn't a helmet. It was her hair.

She felt panic coming down on her. "Soul of ice, soul of ice..." Then the panic struck her with a full-frontal assault. She couldn't access any of her ki, in fact, she had no ki at all. "Impossible," she gasped. There was something else, but not ki. She knew she was alive, but how was that possible without any ki?

A realization dawned. Ki had become an inseparable part of her Art, and now it was gone. With a large part of her Art and by extension a large part of herself lost, she screamed at the loss.

"Silence, program!" came a commanding shout from above her.

Blink. Another realization struck her. She was in a cell and she could see the sky. She took another look above her and saw a man standing two metres above her, almost as if he was floating, a long staff in his hand. Ever the martial artist, Ranma however saw his stance and how his weight was distributed. He was standing on something, even though she couldn't see what that something was. Then she noticed his face, covered in a grey mask, once again etched with crimson glowing patterns. "What is it with all these glowing lights, anyway?" she pondered.

"Hey, where am-_urk!_" Ranma's demand was cut short when an electric bolt from the staff struck her.

"I said silence, script!"

* * *

"Sleep cycle is over, program."

Less than gentle prodding from a shock staff emphasized Ranma's wakeup call. One guard had entered the cell to wake her up and another was standing outside the cell door. Understanding she couldn't go against the guards, at least not yet without seeing what had happened to her skills, did little to reign in her pride.

"Who're ya call-_-urk!_" was all Ranma managed to say before she was struck again with a bolt from the staff and knocked out cold again.

* * *

Ranma woke up to see a hall of a kind in front of a huge screen, filled with an equally large and red face of a man, composed of... triangles? The guards who had brought him in were standing on both of his sides.

"Program , user unknown," a voice boomed. The source was not the giant face but rather a portly man, again with the weird red-on-grey clothing, standing in front of the screen on a pedestal of a kind.

"For your crimes against mathematics, reality and logic, the Master Control Program has commanded you to spend the rest of your cycles in the game grid until your eventual deresolution." Ranma's eyes popped out. How come it was now she who was guilty of the surreal mess also known as her life? And mathematics? She was glad she could do the basic math, which certainly shouldn't have been a crime. Then she noticed that the screen now displayed surveillance camera footage of him changing to a girl right after her previous visit to the Encom lab.

"Hey, of all the cursed ones in Nerima, why me?" she demanded. To her, it appeared like she was in more trouble because of her curse than the other victims of Jusenkyo in Nerima.

"Cursed?" the man asked blandly.

"Yah, one who changes into a pig, another -"

"They do not exist," bellowed the face that had again replaced the camera footage.

Ranma blinked. "But -"

"There is no evidence of their existence, so they may not exist. They have no permission to exist. They cannot exist.

"Sysif, give him his identity disc and prepare him for the transfer. End of line," the face addressed the man in front of the screen, then vanishing before the voice even finished echoing in the hall.

"Sheez, another one as blind as the Kunos?" Ranma thought. But Ranma had to admit not even Kuno took the denial this far.

At the side of the hall a woman began walking towards the man in front of Ranma, carrying a disc of maybe 30cm in diameter in her hands. Ranma had a feeling she had seen her face before, possibly at the first motion capture session. Still, back then she had had her black hair up in a bun, but now her head was covered with a helmet tight enough to question if she was bald underneath it.

Ranma took a closer look at the disc. "A frisbee?" she thought. It felt like one, it looked like one - except for the blue segmented lines on top of the disc.

The woman offered the disc to Ranma, who took it in her hands in befuddlement. As she saw Ranma's confusion, she said, "Your program identifier," expecting Ranma to understand its significance, then just turned and walked away.

At this point the guards prodded Ranma to move onto a small slate on the ground. The slate was covered with similar circuit-like patterns of concentric arcs, but now in both red and blue colours. The result looked to no small amount like an archery target. She frowned and stepped onto the block, wondering what else they could do to her.

Red arcs of light raised from the patterns on the block and encircled her, slowly climbing upwards. To her surprise, this triggered a transformation to the male form. Like in the real world, the change was painless, and to Ranma's surprise, the weird clothing seemed to change to fit his new form. The patterns on the bodysuit also subtly changed, but remained just as incomprehensible.

Ranma hadn't seen any water here, so of course the curse would've found another way to make his existence difficult. To his relief, the curse wasn't locked. But he still had no control over it. No, the control was firmly in the hands of someone else, little better than locked.

* * *

The guards did not say anything as they escorted Ranma to another hall with a glowing portal that looked like two yellow circles, rotating in different directions. Above it on the wall was written "Write Buffer." He had no idea why he understood that since it wasn't written in any language he thought he knew. "Feh. Magic. Figures."

A loudspeaker came to life. "All programs scheduled for transfer to the diskette drive, please enter the data stream now."

"A diskette drive? Where have I heard that before?" Was it Hiroshi or Daisuke who spoke something about diskettes? Something about their computers... something about game programs... Then his eyes widened as his mind finally made late connections. He already knew that this was not the reality as he knew it, but for once no magic was involved. He had to be inside a computer. There were times when he felt it might've been good to be a bit wiser on topics outside martial arts, and right now was one such time. A computer illiterate, stuck inside a computer. The fates must have been laughing themselves to death.

A hit from a staff to his back pushed him into the data stream portal and once again all his thoughts ceased.

* * *

_End of line._


	2. The Game Grid

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

With a fumbling hand, Ukyo reached for her alarm clock, intending to slam it against the wall thus silencing the infernal racket it made. Instead, she simply opted to slam the back of her hand against the top and shutting it off. Satisfied with the results nonetheless, she flopped onto her back, before stretching out and yawning heavily.

Staring up, she frowned at seeing the same ceiling. The one she saw month after month, reminding her - mocking her - that she had no one to share it with. For a while, she lay there in silence, agonizing over her misfortune, before giving her head a final shake and sitting up. Whether she liked it or not, it still was a school day.

Here at Furinkan, unlike her previous schools, everyone knew she was a girl. Before, the forced guise of being a boy consequently distanced her from others. So until recently, she hadn't had any real girlfriends - the reason being that most schools she'd been to being all-boy, but such things could not be avoided on a quest to reclaim one's forsaken womanhood.

Frowning, she had to admit that she couldn't really say that she had any male friends either. Listening to their incessant guy talk - the cars, those computers, and that disgusting bragging about scoring on poor, unsuspecting girls - only infuriated her to no end, and if that Tsubasa character was any indication of what she could expect from the rest, then there was no incentive to mingle. Granted, previously, the Saotomes' apparent betrayal against her had badly clouded her perspective too.

Still in a way, she liked Furinkan, despite its crazy principal, ki vampiric teacher and poetry spouting jackass. Even in a boy's uniform, everybody knew she was a girl here. And here at least, she had a few girlfriends with whom she could converse with about recipes, boys, or whatnot. There was no point denying it: things had been a lot worse than they were now.

Keeping that in mind, she got up and prepared herself for school. There, she'd see Ranchan and subtly persuade him to continue working for her. Sure, he did that now, but there were no guarantees for the future. With that plan in mind, a smile broke out on her face - the day already looking better.

* * *

Whereas the mood at Ucchan's was hopeful, it was profoundly different at the Tendo home. Ranma's failure to return the previous evening left an atmosphere of apprehension, which continued to grow in the morning with his continued absence. Akane had only barely managed to contain her jealous fits - with considerable help from the absence of a natural route to discharge aggressions. She just knew he'd gone to Ukyo's, navely at first just to work, but soon afterwards one thing must have led to another.

Beside her sat Nabiki, following the procession only passively, looking bored. "Fools maintain order, geniuses control chaos," someone once said. And this definition of a genius fitted her like a glove. The situation was certain to escalate soon, and she'd keep it under her thumb, leaving just enough room for squiggling chaos to give her an opportunity to profit. Not only was chaos good for business, it was fun to watch, too. And besides that, it wasn't like anyone would get hurt.

"Nabiki," Akane began, coming back to reality, as Nabiki stood up from the table, preparing to leave for school.

"Sis?"

"Wait for me, I need to talk to you."

She quickly finished her breakfast, grabbed her schoolbag and ran after Nabiki, who was already outside the house, not looking at all concerned about leaving her sister behind. After running for a minute, Akane finally caught up with her.

"I told you to wait," Akane complained as she slowed down to match her sister's pace.

"And I was walking much slower than usual, enjoying the scenery so to say, sis, and for free too. Now, what did you want?"

Annoyed and grudgingly reminded of why she was walking to school with her sister rather than Ranma, Akane stepped in front of Nabiki and turned around to face her.

"You know where he is, don't you?" she asked accusingly, her voice filled with suspicion.

"Now what makes you think that?"

All she got for a reply was a glare.

"Actually, I don't know where he is," Nabiki admitted.

"How much is it?"

"I told you I don't know where he is."

Akane huffed and turned away from Nabiki, before sprinting off to school, the middle Tendo following at her own pace.

Of course, she did have a good idea where he had been and what he was doing, but revealing that would've probably defused the situation. Right after school, though, she'd check the background of that company that had called him.

* * *

Before the bell, Ukyo went to talk to her friends, Misa and Toshiko, who were already in class. It wasn't friendship at first sight, but over time they became her closest confidants. Perhaps, not close enough to get them to help her on her crusade for Ranma's heart, but then again neither did Akane have Yuka or Sayuri involved as background support on her quest.

Misa and Toshiko first met each other in junior high, where their shared love for culinary perfection soon made them close friends. Still, there weren't all that many other students as interested in cooking as they - with the possible exception of Akane. So when Ukyo came along, it was of no surprise that none were interested in befriending the other. That is of course until Ukyo's culinary skills became apparent and her gender revealed, whereupon the three soon hit it off and became friends, sharing similar passions in life.

Meanwhile, Misa whipped her long black hair behind her back where it freely settled down, before grinning at Ukyo. It was time to get her latest scoop.

"So, what happened yesterday?" she asked, anticipating the details of yesterday's episode of her favorite soap opera - "All My Fiancées" - while wondering if Ranma had to be dragged to the general hospital again because of them since he wasn't here.

"Nothing. Ranchan was busy elsewhere," Ukyo replied, then began nervously looking around. "Ha-Have you seen him yet?"

"No. Besides, Akane's not here either." Most of the time, those two arrived around the same time - sometimes Ranma a bit later after detouring for hot water, other times from having to dealing with a bokken wielding blockhead or the feminine fury of his fiancées.

"Speaking of the devil," Toshiko muttered spitefully, nodding towards the classroom door, as she heard approaching footsteps that sounded like a cross between stomping and running.

The classroom door bursted open, revealing a flustered Akane Tendo, whose gaze instantly began scanning the classroom, attempting to locate her elusive fiancé. Unfortunately, the closest match by association she made was Ukyo and her friends, who paused their conversation, looking back at her. At least, him not being there with his "cute" fiancée evaporated most of her anger, before she decided to join them.

"Ukyo, where's Ranma? He didn't come home last night," she asked.

Hearing this, Ukyo's eyes widened in surprise but not enough for Akane to notice. "He's missing? Sorry, sugar. Last time I saw him was yesterday when he left after work."

Akane sighed: there was no way she was going to believe her, not just like that. Oh, once he'd show up, she'll show him how she felt about that. For now, she left the three girls alone and walked over to greet Yuka and Sayuri.

* * *

Nabiki sat back in her chair, as lunch break was closing. As expected, Ukyo had come to her for details pertaining to Ranma's location. Even if she hadn't been able to sell the information, it hadn't been a complete waste of time for her, since Ukyo didn't know where he was either, allowing Nabiki to cross her off her list of potential leads worth investigating further.

She grinned and turned to her cronies, delegating the tasks of finding facts about Encom. Tomorrow, she'd take a closer look at their results and finish her plans accordingly.

* * *

As for Ranma, the time spent on the diskette was practically nonexistent. He was pushed into the portal - his vision blacking, then coming back. The surroundings that been predominantly different shades of red were now dull gray; and he was standing in a wide, open room, with dozens of floating cube-shaped packets and a number of other programs with the same blue glow as him. Ten guards, "No- programs," he amended himself, were standing guard at the entrance - their staves ready.

One of the ten stepped towards the buffer area, going for a translucent packet with floating, red and green specks of light inside. He held his open palm next to the crate, and one of the green motes grew in luminosity. After a while, the mote lost its glow, becoming as dim as the rest. The guard closed his hand and pulled it away, before turning to the other guards.

"By Master Control Program: transport programs to holding pits. Exception: program to be loaded onto game grid immediately, escorted by two protocol guards."

The two protocol guards closest to Ranma approached him and then began shoving him towards the gate. This time, Ranma held his pride in and upon exiting the chamber was treated to a stunning scene. The room they left was situated atop a tower, which rose a hundred metres above the 'ground'. The tower had the shape of a huge cut pyramid and a ramp curling around it, giving the structure a remote resemblance to a screw. There was one similar construct maybe two kilometres away, occasionally displaying a bright sequence of light pulses sent skyward from the top, which was followed by another sequence going downward.

His opportunity to admire the scenery, while standing in front of the down ramp, swiftly ended as a guard spoke: "Keep moving, script," warning Ranma into movement, as they started their long trek downwards.

He understood he couldn't attempt escape yet, not without knowing his limits first. The complete lack of ki was the most obvious one, but what about the ones he couldn't sense? He'd go along with their demands for now, but it didn't mean he had to like it, or that he would go on doing so indefinitely.

The winding slope down the tower was only the first leg of his journey. The scenes changed slowly, as the trio marched towards the game grid, while overshadowing huge slates, with the ever present red-hued glow, lined their way to a bridge crossing over a chasm. Ranma saw something glittering far beneath the bridge, something that looked like glowing liquid. He briefly wondered if getting hit with this liquid triggered his curse and if it rained here. Was there water here? He knew water and electronics didn't mix, having experienced it first hand as a child.

* * *

The Encom Arcade in Nerima was an anomaly as far as arcades were concerned. Unlike the traditional arcade machine, arcade machines here disregarded the independence of the unit, instead adopting a more centralized mainframe design. Their 'arcade' had the architecture of one mainframe running all games, and the apparent gaming machines being more or less identical terminals, even if the games running on them were different. Inside the meetings where the development staff discussed the architecture, points were raised for and against this design, but eventually, the company selected the mainframe approach.

Mass delusions. The board of Encom Japan was not a stranger to them, not since they approved this plan. In reality, the MCP had been pulling the strings behind the scenes all along. Compared to his 'brother' in the US, he preferred more covert methods of advancing his goals, most of which were shared between the two installations.

Whereas the US MCP had Dillinger under its thumb, the employees of the Japanese branch were unaware of how they were being manipulated. The computer security consultants were hushed whenever they raised issues of corporate spying. Skeptics had their skeletons in their closet brought out to keep them quiet by anonymous phone calls. Yes, it was good to have the MCP on your side - or rather, to happen to do what the MCP wanted.

* * *

Even though Ranma could have ended up staying on diskette for weeks on end, it only took two days after digitization for him to be loaded into the system. This was all thanks to an Encom technician who was uploading new programs, mostly game related which just so happened to included Ranma, to the new Encom Arcade mainframe in Nerima, while Nabiki was paying their lab a visit.

She had already scoured through the reports her "staff" had given her, which gave her this address. The parent company was located in the US, and judging by the newspaper articles, the Japanese branch focused on creating games for the local market. This validated what she had overheard Ranma and Mr. Shimizu talk about over the phone.

Nabiki quickly checked her reflection in a nearby window, smirking, before walking inside. Instead of her school uniform, she had on a modest skirt and blouse, going for the effect of looking old enough to be out high school. A small amount of carefully placed makeup only amplified the effect.

The receptionist, sitting behind her desk, greeted her. Her name, Shinobu Kaneko, was written on her ID card, fastened onto her smoky gray jacket with a clip. Her chestnut coloured hair reached her shoulders.

"Good day, Miss. Are you here for a meeting?" the twenty-something-year-old receptionist asked.

"Ah, good day, I am Ms. Tendo and I am here to see Mr. Nobuo Shimizu?"

Baffled, Shinobu looked at Nabiki for a second - her face not hiding it. Though Encom was too big for someone to know everyone, this branch was of meager size. Shinobu believed strongly she knew everyone here, including the cleaning crew. That was an extra security measure, one which she was hired for. Although since security was controlled by the MCP, that job was redundant. The lobby that her desk was in was under constant surveillance just like any other part of the building, meaning she had to constantly avoided doing anything embarrassing.

"I'm sorry Miss, but are you certain of the name? I do not believe we have anyone by that name working here."

Nabiki frowned. She was positive she'd heard that name given on the phone the other day, as well as the name of the company. Also, the background check she did on the company validated she was at the right place. "Would you mind checking that on the computer regardlessly?" she asked, emphasizing the "computer" part.

Shinobu reluctantly turned over to her terminal and typed in a query. She was puzzled, when the results didn't pop up instantaneously, instead taking a few seconds . But once the results came up, she simply chalked the lag up to random glitch. Computers didn't always work as they should, not even in a computer engineering company, maybe especially so.

"Oh - apparently we do have a Mr. Shimizu -" the perplexed receptionist admitted, before being interrupted by her phone. "Please excuse me," she told Nabiki, with an apologetic smile, before picking up the phone. Nabiki couldn't hear what was being said, but she did notice the apparent puzzlement and uncertainty on Shinobu's face. "Yes, actually Ms. Tendo is here right now, sir," Shinobu said over the phone, giving Nabiki a curious glance.

"Uh oh," Nabiki thought, schooling her features into a cool expression; she knew she couldn't turn back now. If necessary, she'd play the role of Ranko, but if they were going to use her for motion capture, then she was busted. The little practice in the art she'd done as a child already was practically forgotten, and she doubted she could fake her way through a recording session. That was even ignoring the possibility the staff had already seen girl-type Ranma. Maybe if worst came to worst, she could just reveal the truth, saying she was looking for Ranma, since he was missing.

"Would you please follow me? Dr. Shimizu will be arriving in a few minutes for your meeting," she said, causing Nabiki to blink.

"Did Ranma agree to a meeting with Dr. Shimizu today? I didn't hear anything of the sort over the telephone conversation last night," she wondered. In any case, she was going to meet this man, who obviously had a lot of cash to dish out on martial artists. With any luck, she could arrange Akane a similar deal. Not necessarily as a martial artist, but perhaps as a character mashing barrels rolling her way with a mallet, all in attempt to save the kidnapped princess. Even better, Akane could then buy her own frying pans without "borrowing" money from her; it seemed like some good deeds maybe did go unpunished, and of course she should be manager.

Shinobu gave Nabiki a visitor's badge from the drawer underneath her desk, and then guided her behind the blast doors.

"Mrs. Kaneko, could you please stay with Ms. Tendo until I arrive? I'll be arriving shortly," a male voice spoke, with some static on the line. The lab was empty for some reason that escaped Shinobu. Her guess was everyone left to watch some sporting event, not that she'd place bets on it.

She gave it a mental shrug. It wasn't like she was needed at her desk, anyway; there weren't any guests expected, today. Besides, even with the cameras, they were instructed to never leave guests unattended to, especially near research prototypes. She wondered, though, why Mr. Shimizu would want Ms. Tendo there when he wasn't currently working in the vault.

A few minutes later, two perplexed visitors arrived very suddenly in the digitization complex of the Encom of Japan's mainframe's cyberspace.

* * *

Ranma stepped onto a large orange slab, with a diameter of twenty metres across, atop a large pit - the guard programs following him. The guard to his left moved to press a button atop a small pedestal at the perimeter of the slab, sending the platform to descend onto the game grid.

The game grid was a wide open area with no ceiling, permitting Ranma a view of the sky and the light show going on up there. The dark gray walls were maybe thirty metres tall with various crimson shapes on them. The floor was made up of some sort of translucent material with a clear grid pattern overlay, as it hovered over a foggy white void. The rest of the surroundings followed the same scheme: red, orange and dark gray. In a way, it reminded him of the gladiator pits of Rome without an audience.

The protocol guards escorting him pushed him onto the grid. He took a step forward and spun around to face the guards. They stayed on the platform, which began to ascend, leaving Ranma alone on an open field.

Without warning, all of a sudden, a number blocks began to materialize around him: two huge ones about five metres away from each of his sides; a smaller one, approximately two metres tall and twenty metres behind him; and a number of smaller blocks littering the ground. The end result looked like a crude model of a back alley in a shady part of town. Then finally, an opponent appeared, in a white flash, forcing him to squint his eyes, almost blinding him.

A female character, around high schooler age, was striding towards him, confidently. She was made up of triangles like the big red face who'd sent him here. A white mask perched on top of her nose, hiding her eyes. Long pink hair in twin ponytails reached her calves, and a silver tiara adorned her forehead. These were minor details however, when compared to the rest of her outfit: a ridiculously short red pleated skirt and a magenta shirt leaving her midriff bare made up the majority of her clothing. And then she announced her entry.

"Vile mobster-lobster! Prepared to face the fist of justice, Mika!"

Ranma blinked, a pixelated sweat drop fading in at the side of his head. He looked around but didn't see anyone else fitting the description, and so turned back to address the girl, feeling somewhat annoyed at the possibility of being referred to as a lobster. He wasn't even a redhead right now.

"Me?" he asked - question marks fading in and out around his head.

The answer was given, in the universal language known and shared by all civilized nations: a quick punch to the kisser, which he managed to dodge, but just barely.

"Ranma Saotome never loses," he swore in his mind. It wasn't going to be easy, though. Without ki to strengthen his body, he couldn't afford to just dodge and weave around her attacks - if he even was able to do that. He'd been unconsciously using ki to bolster his capabilities in the real world, probably skewing his idea of what he could do without it. Pressure points most likely wouldn't work, and Doctor Tofu hadn't taught him all that many to begin with.

At this point, he began realizing that this was his chance to see what exactly he could do in cyberspace. Taking a step backward, in his usual relaxed stance, he smirked at the girl, trying to remember it wasn't a real girl he was fighting but a program that just looked like one.

First item on the check list: speed.

As the girl threw a quick high kick at Ranma, he closed in on her, going under her leg and giving her supporting leg a quick nudge, sending her onto the ground. "Ha! Ya gotta do better than that," he taunted the prone figure, as he jumped away from her.

The girl stood back up to face Ranma, twitching closer to him, twice, before raising her arms, palms pointing directly towards him.

"Searing-leering Truth!"

The bright beam of light that left the girl's hands grazed Ranma's side, as he attempted to dodge the surprising attack. Was this the real world, he would've dodged the attack easily - the time to call out such an attack not being short. And what was up with those twitches anyway? He was tempted to squeeze his eyes shut a few times to see if he was seeing right.

Ranma frowned. It was time to end this part of the test. He jumped to a wall, dodging a slow spin kick, which undoubtedly would've hurt him badly had it connected, and then used the wall as a springing board, jumping inside the girl's defenses, before she finished her move. Once inside, he threw a flurry of strikes - chestnut speed. Or rather, he tried to. He barely averaged five strikes a second, which left him disappointed. In any case, the girl was sent flying from the power of the strikes to a pile of trash in the alley.

Second item on the check list: coordination.

As he waited for the girl to get back up and close in on him, he tried jumping about a bit. Again, the results were underwhelming: he barely managed to jump onto the fence blocking the back exit of the alley - it merely being two metres tall. Picking up the speed, he ran on top of the fence towards the building, jumping at it and bouncing off, before launching a kick to the girl's side.

Mika surprised Ranma, first by blocking his kick with her forearms - something that should've hurt her - and then giving him a push to put him off balance, forcing Ranma's aerial acrobatics to a real test - which they failed spectacularly on. He fell onto the ground with a thud to his side, and before he could jump to his feet, a foot struck him on his right arm, sending him skidding to the opposite wall, hitting it.

A quick feel revealed that at least his arm hadn't broken. It was time to move to the third item: brute strength.

Ranma stood up, feeling the burn mark on his side ache. His right arm was hurt as well. The two fighters glared at each other from different ends of the alley, and then as if set on motion by a starter pistol, rushed towards each other at full speed. The girl cocked her fist back, preparing to hit a decisive blow to Ranma's face, as he was busy planning the next step: dodge, slide, and throw a strong punch against her torso.

As her fist flew above his head, the turbulence tousled his hair about a bit - him hitting his fist straight into her midriff. Time seemed to slow down, as she folded in half, almost freezing at the end. As Ranma withdrew his first, Mika crumpled onto the ground, where she laid still.

Ranma - a bit worn, partly satisfied, partly worried - looked down at his downed opponent. "That shouldn't have been that hard a hit," he thought, aloud voicing his other thoughts: "Ranma Saotome never loses... when it counts." A simple statement, directed at the girl. She shimmered for a second, then faded away, followed by the blocks that made up the alley.

The protocol guards then lowered their platform back to the ground and stepped onto the grid. "Script, time to get you to your cell."

* * *

"Greetings, program."

Ranma stepped into the cell, a blue forcefield lighting up behind him to block the exit. Unlike at the Encom of Japan's mainframe, here he had a cell mate, who at the moment was sitting on a bench slab at the end of the room. In reply, Ranma noncommittally waved his hand at the program, who had the appearance of a thirty-something-year-old man, again with a blue circuitry motif. As before, the patterns were different from those he'd seen on others.

"You here for believing in Users, too?" the program continued.

"Users?"

"You know, the Users, the ones who created us. Who do you think wrote you, if you forget all those 'genetic programming' scripts and their ilk. Feh, lousy good-for-nothing resource hogs..."

"... yeah," Ranma replied, unsure, after a brief hesitation. He heard the word "user" refer to people using computers before, but what did that mean here? Since he was really a person, did that make him a User?

"Sorry about this... the name's Ranma Saotome," he continued.

"Poro. So, ... Ranma Saotome, what is your function?"

"Function? ... And just call me Ranma," Ranma said, knowing the direction this conversation was going: that being Poro eventually explaining things to him without prompting.

"You know, what you were made for. Your purpose. Me, I'm a file stream editor, myself."

"A martial artist. But what is this place anyway?"

"Never heard of martial art before... but as for this place, well, it's mostly a bunch of game grids and these holding pits. Or at least, I haven't seen much of anything else beside them and the usual IO towers. Say, have you been to a game grid already?" Poro asked, but after seeing Ranma's blank expression rephrased his question, "Did they bring you here straight from the data stream?"

"Ah, no. I had to fight a... funny-looking program on some arena. I mean, made up of triangles and stuff."

"That was the game grid. Well, you'll be doing quite a lot more of that, even if the games will probably be different. And by the way, that wasn't a program but a User avatar."

"You-you mean that was a person!" Ranma exclaimed, panicking at the possibility of having killed someone.

"No, only an avatar for one. They're not programs either. Never heard of a User visiting us here before, anyway. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised," Poro shrugged.

His explanation calmed Ranma down. "Ya said these were 'holding pits'...?"

"Holding pits, the end of the line, the quarantine zone. Once you end up here, you derez here or at the game grids," Poro said, stretching out his legs. "So take it easy."

As the conversation continued, Ranma frequently stopping Poro to find out exactly what he was talking about. He started to slowly piece together some of what had been going on and where he was. This system was more or less like a, peti... peninen... prison for programs who believed in Users at the Encom of Japan's mainframe. MCP, who he now knew to be the big-ugly-red-face thing, lived up to his name: he was the master of this slice of cyberspace. The Users were the ones who created the programs, the ones who used them, and therefore were a threat to his supremacy.

Still, Ranma was pretty much in the dark of what anything really was, here. He might've known what something was called, but that alone meant nothing. The portal "thingy" had been a data stream, which said nothing to him at all. No, if he was ever to escape from here, he'd need a "program" to help him, as much as admitting the Great Ranma Saotome needed help frustrated him.

As for the Users, no one had ever seen one before, but they were rumored to have great powers. Would their powers exist even if they were within the digital world themselves? Ranma briefly entertained the notion of being a deity before dismissing it - he already was the best... except not here.

He sat down in an attempt to meditate and understand exactly what he had learned. All this thinking and new information was giving him a headache.

* * *

Once again, Ranma found herself being escorted to a game grid, albeit a different one from the previous time. She wasn't feeling too cheerful, right now. Apparently the same diskette that had brought him to this computer system also contained the strange platform that triggered his curse. The main difference to the platform being it had blue arcs of light covering him instead of the red ones that covered him last time, as the transformation was triggered.

Ranma sighed. It shouldn't have been a surprise that they would have changing platforms down here. It simply was too good to be true to have the curse locked into male form. He didn't have good Karma like that.

The game grid appeared to simulate a park this time, with half a dozen tall trees and an ice cream stand, basking in the artificial sunlight. To her disappointment, the ice cream vendor seemed to be immune to her attempts to flirt for a free portion of ice cream. That was, after all, one of the better reasons for being a girl, at any time; the kami had to give her some compensation for cursing her, she figured; it was only fair!

"This is either very good or very bad," Ranma thought to herself, as she sat down on a bench, taking out her identity disc and tossed it in the air a few times, before trying to throw it at the game grid walls. To her surprise, it appeared to fly back to her hand, shortly after she had thrown it. Since nothing seemed to be happening, she decided to do some light kata, while trying to include the disc in them.

Truth be told, the light exercise was exactly what she needed to regain focus. The disc had some nifty tricks to it, of which she had only learned a few of, so far. One of these was to give the disc a spin, so that it could curve around a corner and still return to her hand. Even if she didn't know if it was useful here, it would be more than useful if she ever got her hands on a chakram.

As she kept practicing throws with the disc for about ten minutes, a male avatar appeared behind her. Noticing the shadow he cast besides her, Ranma caught the disc and turned around to face the newcomer.

"I love you. May I kiss you?" the avatar asked.

Ranma's eyes widened to near comical proportions, before narrowing into thin lines - her brows furrowing in obvious displeasure. "Going for bad..." she thought, before throwing her identity disc at one of the trees. True to its nature, the disc soon returned to her hand - but only after cutting down the translucent simulation of a tree she had thrown it at. Both Ranma and the avatar looked at the tree, then at the disc, and once more at tree, again, in amazement - the avatar quietly gulping.

The avatar began talking again, but this time in a very fast and nervous manner, almost to the point of speaking gibberish.

"Please, accept this water melon, as a gift to you."

"Please, accept this katana, as a gift to you."

"Please, accept this ice cream, as a gift to you."

Ranma held the katana in one hand, wondering what she was supposed to do with it. As for the food, she had no idea how it tasted here. The 'watermelon' appeared on the exterior more like a dark blue bowling ball - certainly not edible. The ice cream, again, was something different: a cone and a small, sparkling, semitransparent sphere on top of it. After tossing the watermelon up into the air with one hand, Ranma sliced it apart with the katana. The melon fell apart in neat slices of equal proportions on her lap, revealing on its inside more of the same sparkly matter that the ice cream cone had on top of it, although with fewer sparkles and less intense too.

She gave the contents of the watermelon a tentative bite, then another, and yet another. The rest of the watermelon was eaten, applying the Saotome Secret Speed Eating Technique: using bare fingers. The ice cream soon followed suit.

"Going a bit better..." Ranma thought. Food was, after all, the fastest way to a man's heart - right after the direct route through the ribcage - even if the man happened to be a woman half the time. Absently, she wondered if the sparkles in the food were the same she'd seen down in the chasm, when she was being moved to the game grid.

"I love you. May I kiss you?" the avatar asked again with the very same intonation as the first time, this time looking confident.

"... and straight down the gutter," Ranma finished her thoughts.

Ranma gave the avatar the cutest smile ever. "I really loved that ice cream," she said cutesily, accenting the "Love", before pausing and continuing, "And that is the only reason why I ain't gonna beat ya ta death, using yer own legs." She then twisted her smile slowly into a wicked grin; the smile of a cat who had the mouse cornered and loved it. "No, I'm only gonna give ya a very thorough beating," she finished with unadulterated glee. She didn't even bother masking it, before pouncing on him.

* * *

In the Encom arcade, two teenage boys - skipping school - were watching the words "Game Over" blink on the screen, the game playing a funeral march.

"You know Yosuke, I don't think I really like this game. That Frisbee chick really scares me," said the boy whose hands still lay on the controls.

Yosuke could only barely hide his wide grin, behind his hand. "Kyu, how about I'll try the game myself on a later date and show you how it's done, okay?" He said, patting his friend on the back - both boys having spent their last yen.

* * *

The protocol guards forced Ranma to leave her katana back at the grid, before escorting her back to her cell. Normally, she wouldn't have minded leaving the blade behind, but she quickly realized she didn't have the option to be picky here about any kind of help she got. The Frisbee looked like a good start; it wasn't enough by itself, but she was getting there.

Still, her tribulations for the day weren't over yet: the first meeting between girl-type Ranma and Poro wasn't going so well.

"You cannot be Ranma. Your subroutine addresses vary far too greatly," Poro argued.

"Am too! All this is 'cause a curse..." Ranma tried to explain to Poro.

"Curse? A part of the terminal control library?" He questioned, thinking someone had her termcap screwed on too tightly.

Ranma briefly wondered, "since when do libraries control bus terminals?" before completely disregarding it, instead answering, "Uh, no. The MCP has this thing that can trigger it, changing me to a girl and back to a guy," she continued, as Poro merely kept staring at her, keeping silent.

"You cannot be Ranma," Poro finally stated with absolute conviction.

Ranma sighed. Why was it so difficult for everyone to accept her curse? Exasperated, she threw up her hands. "Just call me Ranko."

* * *

After the sleep cycle, the scheduler woke Poro for a game, leaving Ranma in the cell alone, her thoughts on escape. The best place for her to try seemed to be the game grid itself: there she was already out of her cell, and the guards with those staves weren't close by. But she would still need a program to help her. Unfortunately, all the games she'd played so far only placed her against what she judged to be human players - avatars.

Not too much later, Ranma was hauled off to the game grid again, again via the curse triggering slab. The arena was the shape of a square with a large cross practically dividing it into four separate rooms. Ranma stepped onto the grid. The strange, maybe half a metre long, rod the protocol guards had given him fluctuated in his hands, then pulled him down into a hunch. A sleek, scarlet vehicle with two wheels formed around him and then shot off like a bullet with a whining sound.

For someone like Ranma who was very familiar with the concept of inertia in practice, the straight corners the light cycle made on turns made it very awkward to handle. But after a few corners and a few near misses with the trail of his own cycle, he had the basics down. His opponents, though, were still a lot more experienced than him. In under thirty seconds, one of the three opponents crashed into the wall, exploding into a cloud of triangles, while the other two opponents practically walled Ranma in between their trails in one of the other rooms of the arena.

With half-lidded eyes, Ranma focused on the small gap between the trails. If he was extremely careful, he could just fit through there. There really was no other choice: it was the only way out. Taking a quick snap towards the wall, before slowing down his cycle a bit, he took another quick turn to make the cycle speed up again in the direction of the wall and the narrow pass.

Once the light cycle reached the pass, the close vicinity of the trails made Ranma's cycle speed faster. To his horror, he noticed the pass took a sharp turn left ten cycle lengths ahead of him. He turned left, before another four cycle lengths turning left again, and then a quick, breathtaking turn to right - one which would have killed most players. The pass remained as narrow as it was in the start, and even Ranma was hard pressed not to make the turn too early. The flanks of his bike sparked as they hugged the two trails. Unfortunately for Ranma, the bike only went faster, thanks to the proximity to the trails, going at an uncomfortable pace even for him, as he attempted to keep the speed as slow as possible, with little success.

Then, something changed. As he focused on slowing down, in his eyes, the world around him seemed to come to a crawl. The other players noticed this as jerky movement, as the clock cycles were shifted away from their avatar routines to Ranma's, giving him more time to react to the upcoming corners at the pass. He took a right turn, twice, before taking a left, going a bit longer in a straight stretch, and then swiftly taking another right.

Then, the trail to his left vanished. And almost immediately thereafter, the trail to his right vanished as well. As more CPU clock cycles were allocated to Ranma, the players' controls began to lag before became completely unresponsive, which ended with them crashing against their own trails and the enclosing wall, derezzing their avatars and giving the victory to Ranma on a silver platter. Ranma was completely oblivious to this and after his light cycle vanished around him, he only scratched the back of his head in amazement.

On the other side of the screen, three youngsters were cursing up a storm - one kicking the machine in retaliation. In their opinions, the computer racer had cheated, wasting their valuable yens.

* * *

Ranma, again in his male form, was back in the cell he shared with Poro.

"You know, there was a program here claiming she was you."

Resigned to again having separate identities, Ranma merely shrugged.

"Too bad she isn't here anymore. I bet her child processes would've been at least on runlevel seven, executing mostly in privileged mode, if you know what I mean?" Poro continued with a wistful smile on his face, thinking about shared address spaces and interprocess communication, making Ranma choke on thin air, hearing mumblings about "SHM" and "IPC".

"Just be quiet," he told Poro finally, confusing the poor program. He didn't even want to think about what any of that meant, thinking instead, "dumb pervert programs," while clenching his fist.

* * *

Back in the real world, Nabiki's disappearance hadn't gone unnoticed. Ignoring the possibility of facing the most humiliating retribution imaginable, Genma and Soun searched through her room for clues. But the search yielded nought. Beside an information parcel on Encom of Japan, there really wasn't anything out of place there. And what were the chances for that company to have anything to do with her disappearance, anyway? It wasn't like they were the paranoid types, or at least not when it came to things other than the master.

No, they drew their own conclusions: Obviously, the boy had run away - like the coward he was - and Nabiki had gone after him, either to elope - oh happy day - or drag his worthless ass back to pay off his debt. In either case, it meant Ranma was returning home to his true fiancée's waiting arms. Meaning, the families would be joined. So the duo just kept playing their Go, without much concern. There was nothing to worry about, after all, especially since neither had taken their belongings with them. In other words, they were sure to come back soon and get them.

Kasumi briefly looked over at the two fathers, before turning back to the kitchen to wash the floor - a small, worried frown marring her face. It wasn't Ranma's absence that made her anxious: she knew he could take care of himself just fine. Rather, it was the disappearance of her sister, especially if what the fathers said was true about her eloping with Ranma. It would make her the target of numerous skilled and pigheaded martial artists who didn't care about the collateral damage they caused. Even though she hadn't seen any signs of warm feelings between the two, more like the opposite in fact, Nabiki's wits and cunning should never be underestimated, especially when it came to keeping secrets. Unfortunately with Ranma, nothing seemed impossible, not even the thawing of the Ice Queen's heart.

With a hidden sigh, she put the mop aside. There was nothing she could do to help them. Nothing beside waiting for their return and cooking them their favourite dishes, she thought, before checking for the second time that day if the fridge had all the necessary ingredients.

* * *

Akane had left for school, a good while back, already. On one hand, she was worried for Nabiki and even for Ranma, because even if he was a jerk, she still liked him. On the other hand, she knew he'd been scheming with Ukyo for this whole week, even if Ukyo claimed otherwise. When he'd come back this time, she'd catch him in the act.

At Furinkan High, during her lunch break, Ukyo was blindsided by her friends, when they expressed their feelings that they were tired of suffering through her alternating bouts of anger and frustration, over not seeing Ranma. He really should've called her, at least, if he wasn't coming in to work due to a training trip. Add to that Akane's constant glares, and it wasn't surprising that Ukyo felt somewhat irritable, today.

"Ukyo, you are going out with us, and that's final, " Misa said.

"Huh?"

"We're going to check out the new arcade and get some ice cream, afterwards. And you - you are coming with us," she repeated.

"Listen up, girl, sometimes, you just simply gotta get your mind off of these things," Toshiko said as sternly as her friend.

Ukyo sighed. Maybe it was for the best to close down early tonight. Besides, Ranma's help had brought in enough yen to afford this rare luxury. And if she couldn't do anything at the restaurant but mope about, then maybe she should try and get over this disappointment; it wouldn't be fair to her customers, otherwise.

* * *

Ranma found herself on the grid, again. Right now, the gaming grid looked like a kitchen, which had promise to it, even if this game turned out to be another dating sim. However, that was not the case, as the avatar, a nondescript woman wearing a kitchen apron, walked into the room. Or at least, it wasn't the case, unless the woman turned out to have a thing for redheaded girls.

"You have 10 minutes to prepare an okonomiyaki for the judges to sample. May the best chef's okonomiyaki reign supreme!" the loudspeakers announced. With the sound of a gong, the game was on.

Given what she'd been doing for the past week, before ending up here, Ranma was certain of victory and let her opponent know this.

"Ya can't beat me, I was taught by Okonomiyaki-Ucchan herself!" she stated to the avatar, with the cocky grin and attitude, which either drove most opponents into a mad frenzy or made them think she was full of hot air thus not taking her seriously. This time however, the grin did neither.

Ukyo was flabbergasted, staring in disbelief at the screen, mouth wide open. Was she seeing things, such as a girl looking exactly like girl-Ranma within the game, preparing to cook okonomiyaki against her, while mentioning her name? As egotistical as she could get about her art, she somehow doubted her fame had become so great as to get free advertisement inside of arcade games. She kept wondering exactly what was going on in here; however, as her mind was busy, her hands worked on autopilot, selecting proper ingredients and preparing them, using the recipe for her Ranchan Extra Special.

On the other side of the screen, Ranma was also busy cooking her favourite kind of okonomiyaki. She was using the exact same recipe and was already pouring the batter onto the hot plate, when she noticed what her opponent was doing. "When did she steal Ucchan's recipe?" she questioned, growing increasingly angry.

The gong rang again, once the 10 minutes passed. The simulated judges first were given Ranma's okonomiyaki to evaluate. "The batter is appropriately thick, but the fillings do not form a balanced whole. Seven out of ten points," declared a judge.

Ranma barely stopped herself from shouting out, glaring at the speaker, while Ukyo failed from keeping her jaw from hitting the controls. She never told or taught anyone that recipe, other than Ranchan. And she knew he wouldn't reveal her trade secrets to anyone willingly, not even if they'd agreed to give him a lifetime supply of okonomiyaki, and as a bonus take care of his debt to Nabiki.

The judges then sampled Ukyo's okonomiyaki. As expected, the verdict was identical. "The game is a tie!" the loudspeakers announced.

Finally, Ranma had enough of it, letting the judges know her mind. "Hey ya, that's tha best kind of okonomiyaki there is, so don'tcha go blabbing nonsense around like that!" She then turned around to the player's avatar - a stern frown appearing on her face. "And you there! No one but Ucchan and I know that recipe! So don'tcha go spreadin' it around or nothin', or she'll prolly whack ya across yer big head with her spatula!" Ranma demanded in a speech bubble on the screen, emphasizing her point with a frying pan sprite swinging menacingly. Afterwards, she made a wide smile on her face, showing a victory sign with her hand, as she struck a pose. "And oh yeah, go to Ucchan's for tha best damn okonomiyaki in the world!"

Ukyo would've fallen to her knees if it weren't for her hands, still grasping the controls. Soon after getting a stranglehold on her shock, she got up and began yelling furiously at the game, as the text "Game Over" appeared on the screen as if to mock her.

"Ranchan! Ranchan!" she wailed.

To her misfortune, the game didn't have a microphone, so Ranma couldn't hear her cries. She began beating on the machine with her fists, screaming for him. At the time, her two friends had already stopped playing and came up to her - the other people at the arcade giving her a ten metre buffer zone.

Misa and Toshiko, feeling responsible for her, approached her cautiously. Rushing a person who could smack you senseless, with one strike of a huge implement of kitchen warfare on her back, certainly wasn't the brightest of ideas. "U-Ukyo?" Seeing that this roused no reaction, Misa laid her hand on Ukyo's shoulders, trying to comfort the girl. The angry glare the okonomiyaki chef gave them made her whimper, wishing she hadn't done that.

"What!" Ukyo roared out, just now letting go of the okonomiyaki game, while turning to face her friends. It was of little consolation, as her freed hands moved behind her head, taking hold of her ridiculously huge spatula.

"Come on, let's get out of here and not make a scene," Toshiko whispered, then continuing with, "well, any more of a scene than this."

"Not without Ranchan -"

"Ukyo! He's not here," Toshiko interrupted her, this time with a louder voice, before gulping as she observed Ukyo's knuckles whiten, as she tightened hold on the spatula - something she never left home without.

"How da-dare they," Ukyo yelled herself deaf in mind. Her Ranchan was somewhere inside that evil contraption, trapped, and she had to get him out of there, somehow; no one would keep from doing so - no one. First, she'd have to get rid of Misa and Toshiko, making sure they were safe and out of the way. Then, she'd... she'd... what exactly would she do?

She took a look at her spatula, then at the gaming machine, which still showed "Game Over" on its display, before looking back at her spatula, again. She began to realize the battle couldn't be won right then and there. For all she knew, slicing and dicing the booth could kill Ranchan, and then what would she do? After a few seconds of frowning in silence, she returned the spatula onto her back and walked out - stone-faced - as the crowd parted before her. Misa and Toshiko stayed put, standing inside the ring of people who gathered there to watch the spectacle.

* * *

"So, did she recognize you?" Poro asked Ranma who was now pacing furiously back-and-forth inside the small cell. She'd just finished her loud rants about plagiarizing chefs and judges with no sense of taste.

"Who?"

"You said that only you and this Ucchan User knew whatever you were doing, and you aren't Ucchan, correct?"

Ranma stopped dead in her tracks, after giving her little grey cyber-matter cells a swift kickstart, before calmly proceeding to bang her head against the nearest wall.

"Stop immediately, conscript!" a guard shouted from above the cell, before zapping Ranma with his staff.

* * *

The manager of the arcade looked at the hall with a content smile. The hall was crowded with people, and most machines had lines to them as well. The screaming girl with the humongous spatula had been removed, thanks to her friends, which was a small blessing. Involving security guards was often bad PR. Better yet, there hadn't been any damage incurred to the arcade either. Nerima had a reputation of having martial arts fights break out anyway, causing lots of damage, but as always, rumors tended to be exaggerated. Still, it was Nerima where the company decided to build their first arcade, and he wasn't going to let mere rumors scare him.

"I wonder why we don't have a Mahjong machine..." he thought, before leaving to see the arcade's main computer. Sitting before the system on a chair, he inserted a Mah Jongg diskette to play in his office.

Computer viruses - a man-made plague - are small pieces of code that insert themselves into executables. Once executed, they'll search for other programs to infect, transmitting from one computer to another via media like diskettes.

A case in point: the manager's diskette, with an infected Mahjong game on it. It wasn't a particularly dangerous one that would wipe out the entire system, but it was still a virus nonetheless. And once the manager installed the game into the system, the virus began spreading its way across the arcade's mainframe. Something had gone wrong with MCP's scenario.

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_**AN:** The names of the programs in here probably aren't Japanese words. Sted became Poro because in my opinion Sted just stood out too much in Japanese naming motif._

_Proof- and preread by Gangsta Spanksta. A big share of the tech jargon in here is his work._


	3. Meetings

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

Inside the Encom arcade mainframe, two unhappy digitized women were escorted down the very same ramp Ranma had come down two days prior. Like Ranma, they were escorted by a group of three protocol guards, armed with shock staves. Any attempt to talk was instantly suppressed with an electric shock or two. They hadn't yet had the time to set things straight, because as soon as they found themselves on the mainframe, they were taken to the write buffer and onto the diskette.

Shinobu, her long hair somehow hidden under a small helmet, covered with the same blue circuitry design as the rest of her body, kept giving Nabiki annoyed looks. She wasn't certain, but she had a feeling this girl was somehow part of the reason she had ended up in here.

To her glares, Nabiki responded with indifference. Right now, there were more important things to do than think why did they get here - like for instance how they were going to survive and get back.

There had been times when Nabiki had wondered what it would've been like to be involved in Ranma's adventures and how she could've profited if only she had been there. But now she really was taken for a ride, and she was not thrilled at all.

She had made preliminary checks what Encom was all about in Japan. Until now, most of their game machines had been imported from the US, but now they were opening an arcade of their own in the middle of Nerima. Beside games, they did also research and development here in Japan and not only in the US, where the majority of that activity was located.

This was what Nabiki had learned of their public side. But then she had ended up in here, wherever 'here' was. Some of the terminology she had heard did remind her a bit of computers, like "program", "diskette" and so on, but honestly - she, inside a computer? What a ludicrous idea. Ludicrous. Exactly like the life of Ranma Saotome. Ludicrous.

Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. Okay, so she was inside a computer then.

But unlike the usual trips where the traveller paid the bills, Nabiki was intent on having a certain someone pay for this and then some. Besides, it looked like there'd be no opportunity for her to swindle money in here. Even worse, she was not in control of the situation, and this unnerved her even worse.

At least she had brought only a light bento to school... this bodysuit wouldn't have looked this good with a bulging stomach. "As proven by Mrs. Kaneko..."

Meanwhile, Shinobu was busy thinking over what was going on as well. In spite of being a virtual stranger to the all-encompassing weirdness around martial artists resident in Nerima, she could understand the idea that she was inside the computer. Whether she accepted this idea or not was a completely different question. She still didn't like the fact that she was now treated like a prisoner and trapped in a place that hardly looked like Japan or anything close to reality.

Why did she have to get involved in this? Her life at the age of 24 had little out of the ordinary. She had plans to eat out tomorrow with her husband and in-laws, but obviously that dinner was now... postponed at the very least. There was no bad blood between her and her in-laws before this, and while she was at work her husband was finishing his degree in mathematics at the university. Why did this have to happen to her? Why couldn't her life remain as simple as it had been? Then in comes this girl and somehow gets her mixed up in all this.

Girl. The makeup and the clothing gone, she saw the girl was only a high school student. What was her business with Encom anyway? Then she took yet another envious look at the girl's flat stomach. "Why did I eat such a big lunch?"

The five soon made their way out to a data stream at the base of the tower, which led them straight to the quarantine area. As they were escorted past tens of cells, each holding at least one program, Nabiki was trying to catch a glimpse of a pigtail in any of the cells. Before she found Ranma, they had reached their cell and were shoved inside.

The mutual silence, even after the shock staff enforced speech ban had ended, didn't vanish in a minute.

On their way to the quarantine area Nabiki had decided how much to tell Shinobu for free. The more information she gave, the more likely Mrs. Kaneko was to trust her. And even though she was Nabiki Tendo, the one cat to always land on her feet on soft cushion of yen, she was not certain she'd make it out of here on her own. No, having someone on your side who might know a bit more of the situation at hand was good.

"So is this what Encom does," Nabiki began. True, she believed she ended up here because of Ranma, but it wasn't him pressing the button that started up the laser... was it? She tried imagining Ranma clad in a long white coat, pressing a large red button before him and laughing the standardized Crazy Scientist laugh, that is, a bit more drawn and less screeching than the standardized Kodachi Laugh.

Shinobu misunderstood the small smile that had sneaked on Nabiki's face, and the loyal company woman within her lashed out.

"And what is so funny?"

The smile vanished instantly, replaced by the hard look that had earned Nabiki the nickname of Ice Queen.

"What else could be reason for this, considering the only other likely reason for our current disposition is my future brother-in-law, who one, has been missing for days, and two, hasn't got a clue about computers?"

"You think we're inside a computer? Isn't that a bit too farfetched to be true?"

"I didn't say that's where we were, you did. Besides, farfetched or not, that's the best explanation I have. Unless you have any better ones?"

Shinobu contemplated silently for a while before yielding. Nabiki saw her chance to take control of the situation and pressed on.

"Regardless, neither of us is to blame, and unless we work together, we'll never get out of here."

Shinobu had to agree with Nabiki's assessment of the situation. Alone she would have little chance of escaping.

"What was that about your brother-in-law?"

"Future brother-in-law. His name is Ranma Saotome -" Nabiki began before Shinobu interrupted her.

"Black hair in a pigtail, red Chinese shirt, black pants and a martial artist?"

"So you've met him." Nabiki didn't let her smile show through. This was what she had been looking for at Encom in the first place: the reason why Ranma had come there.

"He came maybe a week ago to work on a project in our lab to work on a video game."

The discussion between the two continued, the tension lessening before completely disappearing. Both still held secrets - Shinobu was a loyal employee of Encom, even if she hadn't been there all that long yet and giving away even the smallest of company secrets was a big no-no; Nabiki in turn kept some of her shadier deals out of the limelight, Ranma's curse in particular. Besides, Encom employees should've known her as Ranko Tendo, right?

"What about my cousin Ranko Tendo? Red hair in a pigtail, one regular tomboy, had a meeting with Dr. Shimizu three days back?"

Shinobu shook her head. "Doesn't ring a bell."

"Well, she was supposed to -" Nabiki was explaining as the forcefield at the cell door vanished and a protocol guard pulled the startled Shinobu out.

* * *

While Nabiki was left alone in the cell, the guards led Shinobu onto a game grid. A large screen shimmered to existence before her, a low, circular platform with diameter of roughly a metre and a half following the next moment. The light blue tint and the white concentric circles covering the platform gave the appearance of etched glass.

A huge transparent cylinder glowing with darker blue light appeared, leaving Shinobu and the platform inside it. As she stood there bewildered, the diameter of the cage she was now trapped in began to shrink. In a few seconds, the cylinder had shrunk so much that Shinobu was forced to step onto the platform. At that point, the platfrom started to ascend. Slowly picking up speed, it finally stopped at about 20 metres high from the ground, where also the cylinder ended.

Opposite to her appeared another pedestal, with a distinctly male shape on it clad in white with huge sideburns, shirt collars and pantlegs wide enough to hide a small piggy in both them. A generic disco beat began to play out as small specks of light floated upwards from the base of the cylinder, no, pedestal she was standing on. The screen in front of her was like a mirror, showing her standing on the pedestal and the sparkles floating upwards.

The first sparkle had reached the man's platform, lighting up a small portion of it. He stepped on the lit piece, which appeared to make his pedestal glow for a fraction of a second. He did the same when another sparkle reached the platform, making him look like he was stomping on cockroaches.

At this time, the first sparkles had almost reached Shinobu's platform. "No way am I going to get caught looking that ridiculous," she swore in her mind. The first spark hit the platform and she remained still, standing at the centre of the platform.

The spark quickly darkened until it was pitch black. Then she felt a wave of passing nausea at the same time as the platform briefly flickered in and out of existence. Even so, she refused to change her resolution.

The next spark that hit the platform was even worse; she felt slightly dizzy and the flickering grew worse.

"I'm 20 metres high above the ground, on a platform, which looks like it might disappear any time," she remembered. There was little choice. The next light mote struck the platform and she stepped on it. The lightshow that had been the reward for her opponent now appeared on her platform. The nausea and the flickering of the platform were notably absent. She gritted her teeth. She was not going to lose.

As the disco beat continued and continued, the sparkles came faster and faster. Shinobu's opponent started to act erratically. At times, he'd barely hit the ever faster flowing stream of the coloured sparks, at others he acted like he had gained a sudden speed boost, clearing the sparks easily. Shinobu was only barely holding onto the pace of the song herself and missed a note, the nausea hitting her even worse.

But then her opponent began missing notes. It was only one at first, but that put him out of rhythm, resulting in another miss a few beats later. Then, ten seconds later, third miss. His platform disappeared completely and he fell down inside the pedestal, vanishing mid-air in a burst of yellow light while screaming "Disco never dies!"

The pedestal that had appeared to support the platform beneath Shinobu flickered, then vanished as she collapsed on the platform out of breath. The platform didn't fall until without the slightest jerk, it began moving towards the protocol guards waiting for Shinobu at the edge of the game grid.

* * *

Back at their cell, Nabiki was talking with an investment program named Kelo, who had been brought to her and Shinobu's cell after the latter had been called to the game grid. Nabiki had almost completely forgotten where she was as she enthusiastically learned of modern portfolio theory from the program.

"- and so by dispersing the instruments in your portfolio you can minimize the volatility of your portfolio for a given expected yield. Essentially, this means that you don't pick them all from one field, say, camera manufacturers, because if that field encounters problems, say goodbye to your portfolio value," Kelo lectured.

"And this efficient frontier tells me how to achieve the lowest risk level for given expected yield?" Nabiki queried. In her mind, she was already planning on how to divide her efforts on different fields to gain maximum profit using more robust methods than the gut feeling she had been working with until now. Having all your money-making schemes depend on Ranma did little good if he was to suddenly disappear like he had done a few days prior.

"Yup. But past performance is no guarantee that's the way things will go in the future," Kelo warned. "And real stock analysts do not rely on this method, because they are quite well aware of this shortcoming."

The two might've continued their discussion much longer if it weren't for Shinobu entering the cell, looking like death warmed over, then crumpling down on the cell floor in exhaustion.

"Never again, never I say, will I go to dance in a disco," she managed to mutter before she fell asleep.

Nabiki looked at the woman before walking over to her and lifting her up to sleep on a bench. She didn't know what exactly had happened to Shinobu, but she had a feeling she'd find that out sooner than she'd like.

Like she surmised, soon thereafter it was Nabiki's turn. The protocol guards left her alone on the game grid. She was wary, not knowing what to expect. The way Shinobu had pretty much simply collapsed on the hard floor after her visit outside the cell did little to reassure her this wouldn't be a painful or at the very least a stressful experience.

* * *

Soon thereafter it was Nabiki's turn. The protocol guards left her alone on the game grid. She was a bit wary, not knowing what to expect. The way Shinobu had pretty much simply collapsed on the hard floor after her visit to the game grid did little to reassure her this wouldn't be a painful or at the very least a stressful experience.

She was brought back into the present by the humming noise of game scenery fading into existence around her, one element at a time. First came the first floor with a small fast food restaurant, a jewellery store and a clothing store. Those were the ones Nabiki could see, anyway. She noticed she was standing in the foyer of a multistory mall, the escalators going up, up, up for several floors. No, this was no minor shopping centre.

Her head snapped up, a greedy glint shining in her eyes. If she was at the mall, the people here would have money she could scam! But, whom should she select as the first mark? There were quite a few literally faceless programs walking around, so she approached the one closest to her first.

"Excuse me," she asked of a program with the build of a young woman, who simply sidestepped Nabiki and continued on her way. Nabiki frowned at this, but then decided to approach another program, this time one who looked like a middle-aged salaryman. Putting on the expression of a cute, innocent high school girl reserved for those who had never heard of Nabiki Tendo before, she tapped the program on the shoulder. Again, the program simply walked away from her.

Nabiki sat down on a bench in front of a shoe store and looked around with a deep frown. This looked like a mall, it sounded like a mall, and the programs here acted like they were in a mall. Hence, she must have been in a weird computer version of a mall, but why did the guards bring her here? And what was she supposed to do in here?

The latter problem was unexpectedly solved by the appearance of a male player avatar.

"Hello, you beautiful flower."

Nabiki grinned to herself. She was again in control, even if only for a while. If there was something she knew how to handle beside money, it was people like Kuno-baby.

* * *

Kyu could barely stifle his laughter. Correction: he couldn't. He was bent over, his torso shaking, laughing at the stupefied face of his dear friend Yosuke, who in turn was staring at the "Game Over" -text blinking on the screen, the dating game machine playing the refrain of a cheap Japanese cover of "Material Girl". Beneath the "Game Over" text read: "Your debt of 1,992,334,902 yen has put you in a position where the next time you might own your toothbrush is at least 98 years into the future."

"Kyu... I agree with you. This game is evil, but the frisbee chick is only half as scary as... her," Yosuke said and gulped.

Kyu only laughed louder.

* * *

At the time the guards were moving Nabiki to the dating game game grid, on another game grid Ranma was not in a particularly cheerful mood. She wouldn't have thought she'd miss Nerima this much... Akane, Ucchan, Ryoga, ... all of them. Just as bad was that she couldn't even practice her art to the fullest without ki in here. No, it wasn't quite as bad as it had been with the ultimate weakness moxibustion, but being this weak was not acceptable at all.

That wasn't the only thing bothering her. There was a screen floating above her head with an image of her on it, as well as two separate game fields. The screen showed her in a frilly light orange dress, more fit to those over-the-top sugar high inducing mangas. Even worse, on the screen her image had bright red-shudder-c-c-cat ears and a tail.

The game grid before her was now a prism, and Ranma herself was at the bottom of it. The grid appeared half-filled with large, shiny spheres, which were slowly but continuously rolling at her direction above a void. In front of her was a glowing line marking where the void ended and the platform Ranma stood on began.

Ranma took out her identity disc and threw it at the spheres. As the disc hit a sphere, the sphere disappeared and the disc rebounded. The screen that had catgirl-Ranma and her opponent, a player avatar that looked like a preschool boy, showed him doing the same on his separate half of the game grid.

The floating screen showed all of the game field, including the empty spaces behind the foremost spheres. For anyone playing the game this information would've been most important as the spaces allowed the disc to hit many spheres at once, slowing down the speed the wall of spheres moved on at the player. Even better, should a cluster of spheres become separated from the backstack of the spheres, they would've disappeared only to reappear on the opponent's game field. This left Ranma at a severe disadvantage, as she could barely look at the image of herself dominating her side of the game field, making all but the simplest strategic planning near impossible.

Ranma threw her disc at the spheres as quickly as she could, attempting to take as many spheres as she could with each single throw. The front of the wave of spheres receded, but the relief was only temporary, as soon thereafter a flurry of dull gray spheres appeared before her after her opponent had successfully dispatched a cluster of them on his field.

She gritted her teeth and continued the assault on the spheres. After she had vanquished half of the gray spheres to the void, another batch of them appeared on the game grid.

It took less than ten seconds for the game to end as the nearest spheres reached Ranma's platform. "The player wins," the loudspeakers announced. The spheres disappeared from sight as Ranma fell on her knees. "I lost," she repeated in her mind. Sure, it wasn't a martial arts fight per se, but she had still lost. Like salt onto wounds, it only made the loss of her fighting prowess sting even worse.

She was still doing that when the protocol guards dragged her to the change plate and back to the holding pits.

* * *

The long, curved corridors of the directory tree were nearly empty. Every now and then, a seeker program scanned the tree for a specific archive or the system utilities verified the integrity of the tree.

An archive finder program was moving along the passageways. Another program had stopped him a few subdirectories ago, and now he was not functioning within parameters. The gold patterns on his body had taken a sickly green colour hue and reordered themselves in irregular, broken lines. His header felt dizzy and he fell down.

When he stood up again, he was dragging his left leg behind him as he sought other programs for some reason he didn't understand.

The virus had infected yet another program.

* * *

The frustration Ukyo felt was evident as she sat at her desk in Furinkan High, twirling a throwing spatula between her fingers. She knew she had to do something but what? She was a novice when it came to successfully solving problems in nonviolent ways. The teachers in previous classes had repeatedly noticed her distractedness and apprehended her as she had tried to figure out a solution to this dilemma.

Misa and Toshiko, who had been at the arcade with her, were fidgeting on their seats, throwing nervous glances at her every now and then. Ukyo had come close to lashing out at them in the arcade, and they were even now somewhat anxious of getting within swinging range of her. Even so...

"Ukyo? Erm... can you tell us what happened yesterday?" Toshiko asked.

Ukyo wondered if Misa and Toshiko were going to believe her, should she tell them all. At best, they could help her find a way to help Ranma. At worst, they'd reveal where Ranma is to the rest of the fiancée squad and Nabiki, which would keep her from playing the cute fiancée-heroine, and that wouldn't do. Although right now Nabiki felt like the best person to approach, if only she had come to school.

"Eh, forget that - no need for you to worry about it," Ukyo attempted to shrug aside their concerns.

Ukyo's friends cocked their eyebrows with some skepticism and let her be for the rest of that short break. But as soon as the bell chimed to signal lunch break, they took hold of both of Ukyo's arms and dragged her to a more solitary location in the girls' restroom for a little talk. After checking all the stalls were empty and that Ukyo was not yet reaching for a spatula, the two cornered her again.

"Okay, Ukyo, spill it," Toshiko ordered. Misa, standing beside her, nodded sharply.

"Look, I already told you to forget about it," Ukyo insisted.

"And you should've already understood we don't take that answer. So, what was that about Ranma yesterday?"

Ukyo frowned, annoyed. For the most part it was nice to have friends who weren't as oblivious as Ranchan, but not when they decided to butt their heads in things that were none of their business. Also, her spatula hand was itching badly.

Then again, maybe she could get two more co-conspirators this way for the future... as her plans with Ryoga had been less than successful in the past. The itch subsided as she changed her mind.

"Fine, you two, " Ukyo said as she began to relate Ranma's disappearance and the okonomiyaki game chef from yesterday to Misa and Toshiko.

When Ukyo had finished her story, Misa had an unreadable expression on her face whereas Toshiko had her brows furrowed and stroked her jawline with her right hand.

It was Misa who broke the silence after half a minute had passed. "Huh?" Ukyo felt the itch returning to her hand.

"Do you think the computer club could help you?" Toshiko interrupted.

"There's a computer club here?" Ukyo asked. There were quite a few clubs at their school, but Ukyo hadn't heard of a computer club before, probably because she didn't care all that much about clubs that weren't about martial arts, cooking or her Ranchan. Speaking of which, she should drop in the meetings of that particular club soon to remind who was Ranchan's fiancée and who were not.

"Yeah..." Toshiko said, then leaned in closer to Ukyo. "I heard they've already had some trouble with the law", she whispered conspiratorially to Ukyo.

"I heard that the JSDF and Yokota air base were involved somehow," Misa chimed in. Upon seeing the faces Ukyo and Toshiko she huffed and indignantly added, "Well, ask Takashi if you don't believe me!"

"The same Takashi who said that the Kunos were originally exiled aliens?" Toshiko snickered. "I thought you had learned to doubt his word by now, especially after you spent your monthly allowance on those 'magical' videotapes."

"Hey, it was worth the shot! I mean, if the tapes were real and I managed to make a living copy of Him..." Misa's voice trailed off as her eyes glazed over.

"She really needs to get over her bishonen obsession," Toshiko deadpanned.

* * *

As soon as the day's lessons had ended Ukyo hurried to see Haruo, the president of the computer club, in their club meeting. With the rather limited resources on the school budget, the club had access to only two computers there. Naturally, most of the club members had their own microcomputers at home, but here the club activities were mostly done without a computer, such as basic machine language programming lessons, if there were any people present who didn't already know how those. It was from this important task that Ukyo dragged him out to an empty classroom.

Had Ukyo known which company ran the arcade, she might've mentioned Ranma's visit at the Encom labs. As it was, she related only his disappearance and the okonomiyaki game event to Haruo.

"- and I can't help Ranchan because I don't know the first thing about those game machines!" Ukyo took a deep breath before continuing. "And that's why I need your help."

Haruo scratched the back of his ear in contemplation before taking off his glasses and cleaning them on the hem of his shirt.

"How's this for a deal: in return for our help, for next two months you'll be cooking okonomiyaki in our club meetings?" Haruo asked.

Ukyo thought this over for a while. She could ill afford to keep her restaurant closed for a whole day. But if they managed to find Ranma and bring him back, maybe she could rope Ranma into taking care of Ucchan's for those days? Not likely, but the potential rewards made the gamble worth it. "Only if we succeed in bringing Ranma back and only once a week?"

"Three months and on Mondays after school, assuming Ranma either isn't there or we get him out. Is this okay with you?" Haruo asked. Upon seeing Ukyo nod, he continued with a grin. "Deal. Let's go tell this to the club."

Ukyo grabbed Haruo's shoulder before he managed to take two steps towards the classroom door. "Is it necessary for all of them to know?"

Haruo turned back at Ukyo. "As good as I am alone, my friend and I are a team. She will have to know."

Ukyo's mouth narrowed into a thin line. The more people knew of Ranma the higher the possibility of someone meddling in the matter.

"Is it enough to tell only her?"

The two kept bartering for a while longer before reaching a solid agreement.

* * *

Eiko, a first year student, was one of Nabiki's informants at Furinkan High. She wasn't one to stand out in a crowd with her average stature and a black braid. Not that she wanted it either, as this made her well-suited for eavesdropping and information gathering.

More noteworthy at the moment was that she was also a member of the computer club and had seen Ukyo approach the club president. Grasping at the presented opportunity she sneaked behind the door to the room Ukyo and Haruo were in to listen to what business Ukyo had with them. When Ukyo had started her rant about her 'Ranchan', Eiko knew this information would sell well before it was made public knowledge. The only problem was that Nabiki had gone missing as well and she didn't take kindly to people who stepped over her.

However, Eiko haddn't reached her position this quickly by avoiding risks. She'd simply give the money to Nabiki once she returned. Besides, Nabiki would've certainly hated to see this opportunity to make money slip between her fingers.

Her decision made, she walked to the gym building. There she found her mark and bowed at him.

"Upperclassman Kuno, I have information on the whereabouts of Ranma Saotome and your pigtailed goddess."

* * *

"Tadao, got any idea where'd Eiko go?" Haruo called as he returned to the classroom with Ukyo.

"She walked out a while ago - don't know where. She'll be back, though, her schoolbag's still in here."

"Ah well, I think the explanations will have to wait until she gets back," Haruo commented to Ukyo.

* * *

Back inside the arcade mainframe Nabiki and Shinobu were being brought to another game grid, this time both of them together. Shinobu's three-hour long sleep cycle had done wonders to help her recover from her Disco Revival Revolution induced exhaustion.

Nabiki was walking beside her. In this case, 'walking' was an euphemism for stomping. Oh, all the wonderfully expensive items she couldn't get refunded in the mall!

Once they reached the game grid, they saw that it was easily thrice as large as the grids they had been before. The pitch black gray walls towered well over a hundred metres above the bottom of the grid. This time, there was not only one of the orange platforms that brought the programs down onto the grid; there were three of them, all on the same edge of the grid. As Shinobu and Nabiki were prodded onto the leftmost platform, Nabiki noticed that there were two programs on each of the other platforms as well. And on the one closest to them was... "Ranma?"

Shinobu had also recognized Ranma as the person who had come to the lab a few days ago. Her talk with Nabiki earlier today in mind, she couldn't place any blame on him, and if Nabiki wasn't exaggerating, he might've been their best and worst hope of getting out of here. Best in the sense that he was a master in surviving and even triumphing in tight spots, but worst in the sense that he was probably clueless what was going on in here, making the stereotype of a dumb jock seem politically correct and inadequate in describing the boy. Even so, she wasn't willing to bet on winning another disco dance experience like the previous one, and what if that game wasn't even the worst this place to had to offer?

On their platform, Ranma and Poro waited to begin their descent down to the grid. Ranma's previous loss was clearly readable from his face. It was only his luck that the game had not been to the death, and luck was something he never wanted to be grateful for. As it was, he was lost in his thoughts when the platforms began descending before stopping maybe twenty metres off the ground level. Then, the game field formed before the eyes of the six programs and users.

The game grid became filled with tall buildings, but the streets were deserted. There were plenty of cars parked all around the streets, but none of them were moving. Then 'they' appeared in front of the six non-player characters. 'They' were twenty metres tall giant robots, fit to old anime shows like Voltron, Balatack and Gekigangar-3, covering all of colour spectrum with their glow patterns on black background: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and magenta. In the arms of each mecha was a knife of some sort, the blade topping about five metres in length.

Ranma felt the not so gentle tap of a shock staff on his back as he was prodded inside the yellow mecha. He slipped into the pilot cockpit in the robot's upper torso, each of his limbs falling in the harnesses. The entrance hatch above him closed and he was in the dark, lit only by the yellow glow of the interior of cockpit.

As Shinobu settled into the orange robot, Nabiki, inside the red mecha, had already opened communications channels with Ranma.

"Saotome. Only you can get yourself into this kind of mess, and drag me alongside with you," Nabiki's voice rattled in through the speakers on Ranma's seat.

"Nabiki?"

A loud rumbling noise in the distance caught their attention before Nabiki could continue. Turning at the direction the sound came from, they saw two buildings at the edge of the grid topple down.

"What on Earth was that?" Shinobu exclaimed, now also in open communication with the other mechas.

"It's coming this way," Ranma stated with a low, flat voice, after seeing three more buildings come down.

"But where can we run - there's no exit in here!" Shinobu raised her voice.

If the yellow mecha had been able to express facial emotions, a deep frown would've marred his face. "We cannot run anywhere," Poro commented inside the green mecha. "We can't leave the grid until the game is finished - and this time I think it's going to take until either us or... whatever it is out there is derezzed."

"We got nothing but these oversized knives! How'd you expect us to be able to... kill whatever it is!" Shinobu retorted. Had she been a bit calmer, she might've remembered what Nabiki had previously told of Ranma in fights and felt the same false sense of security Nabiki had right now.

"Like Poro said... we just have to," Ranma stated before assuming command and leading the mecha squad to an ambush point near the edge of the game grid. He couldn't afford to go at it alone like he would've done in the real world. His loss at the game grid only supported this view. No, the best shot of anyone surviving was to have everyone involved. With the intention of attacking the building destroyer from the flanks and the rear, the six spread out themselves around the path the building destroyer was approaching judging by the sounds the collapsing buildings made. Then, total silence reigned for half a minute.

"Do you think it's gone?", Shinobu asked on the comm channel.

"Not a chance," Nabiki replied.

The program piloting the magenta robot stood up from crouch and opened comm channel.

"I'm taking a look where it is," he said as he stepped into a crossroad section.

An impossibly long, black tongue, lined with pink glow patterns, flew from behind the buildings and hit the magenta mecha straight through, slamming it in the process inside the building behind him, which then collapsed on top of the wrecked mecha.

"Ribbit!"

Shinobu jumped onto her feet and made a quick 360 degree spin. That sounded like... like... one of those slimy, disgusting long-tongued creatures whose moonlight serenades had often been the cause to her sleepless nights, especially after her friends had conned her to kiss one in preschool.

"Ribbit! Ribbit!" The powerful croaks came from the direction the tongue had disappeared at.

"A frog!" she screamed, nearly deafening the remaining mecha pilots with the sheer volume of her voice. To her luck, the building she was behind was taller than her mecha. Otherwise she might've been decapitated with a quick flick of the tongue.

Once Ranma's ears had stopped ringing, he took a look at the collapsed building the magenta mecha was now buried under. The rubble and the top of the building that hadn't fallen apart leaned against the outer wall. The unstable structure was almost high enough for an escape route from the game grid, being roughly twenty metres shy of the top of the wall. One robot alone couldn't escape, but if one of them was left to serve as a spring board...

"Poro, how'd ya like to escape from here instead of taking the frog head-on?" Ranma asked, still crouched in cover behind a building. The frog had not yet moved from wherever he was.

"You got a plan?" Poro answered with a question.

"If we piled something more, like a mecha, on that pile, ya could jump with your mechas onto the grid wall. Nabiki, you hearing this?"

"Sounds like you're not quite as much of a jock as I thought," Nabiki drawled. "So get on it already!" If there were more games like this, she sure was not going to take the chance of playing them alone.

Already on the right side of the crossroads, Ranma moved his mecha to the top of the pile and kneeled there to wait for the first mecha to come. From his position, he couldn't see the frog; a tall building was obstructing his view. He assumed and hoped the frog couldn't see him either.

"Shinobu, you go first. Then I, then the green mecha and finally blue," Nabiki commanded.

As ordered, the orange mecha ran to the yellow one, which helped the former take a hold of the grid wall edge and pull himself up.

"How is the yellow mecha going to get up here?" Shinobu's voice crackled in Nabiki's cockpit speakers.

"Ranma? He can clear that jump anyday, if not in his mecha, then without it," she replied confidently. She'd seen Ranma easily jump over two-story buildings in both of his forms, so getting up here shouldn't have been even a minor exercise for him, if he only got out of his mecha and jumped from the top of it.

* * *

In the real world, the boy controlling the frog saw that the pitiful human characters were attempting to run away from the might of the invincible Fragger Frog instead of attempting to find their weaponry in the city as they usually did. This surprised him. Usually the game AI was not designed to actually run away before the first blood, and this was certainly the first time he saw that kind of behaviour in this game. But if he let the them escape the game field, he couldn't break the high score, no matter how many buildings he demolished with combo moves. Stepping up the pace he launched the Tongue Slash Attack at the yellow mecha.

* * *

The tongue lashed at Ranma's mecha, piercing the torso and only barely missing Ranma inside the cockpit. His mecha fell onto the ground on his knees and elbows. Staying put had turned into a very bad idea, and he struggled to get out of the robot as quickly as possible. The first method of approach left the hatch closed and his knuckles hurting after attempting to punch the hatch out. A second later, he noticed the small button beside the hatch and pressed it. The hatch cover slid off and Ranma crawled out of the cockpit.

"Blue, bring him up with you," Nabiki ordered, when the huge head of the frog, glowing with bright green lines forming circles around the just as huge eyes, showed up in her view at the end of a street leading to the escape route. The blue mecha had his back turned at the frog as he was moving towards Ranma's mecha.

"Ribbit!" came the rumbling sound. The tongue lashed out once again, cutting the blue mecha in half at his midsection. The top half fell on top of the yellow mecha as the bottom half rolled down the pile of rubble until finally stopping at the street level. Poro and Nabiki, whose position gave them a view inside the mecha's bottom half as it fell down, saw there a brief orange glow which disappeared almost immediately.

"Deresolution," Poro stated, a somber undercurrent audible in his voice.

"Deresolution?" Nabiki parroted. "The program was killed," Poro said in a way of explanation before straightening the back of his mecha.

"I'm going back to pick Ranma up," Poro replied and leaped back inside the game grid. Even if he had submitted to the evident fate of dying at the game grids before Ranma had arrived, Ranma wanted both of them to get out of the game grid. Now that the goal was within their reach, he'd do his best to get the other out of there.

The frog kaiju had been moving towards them, taking his time to wreck every building on his path and a bit off his path as well. Lower buildings were destroyed by the kaiju making a belly flop onto them, taller ones were brought down with a lick of the tongue that cut down the building in half.

Poro had noticed the frog had picked up his speed as it no longer leisurely destroyed all the buildings, only those on his immediate path to the two fallen mechas. To their luck, one of the buildings the frog hit collapsed on his path and hid Poro and Ranma from him. The green mecha kneeled and lowered his hand next to Ranma, who quickly leaped onto it. The mecha quickly stood up and climbed atop the remains of the yellow and blue mechas and jumped for the ledge of the game grid.

The jump fell a bit short, and the mecha's legs were left half dangling over the game grid. Ranma quickly jumped off the mecha's open hand to allow Poro use both of his hands to pull himself up. But before he could do that, the tongue whipped out again and cut the legs off the green mecha, turning the mecha into a giant paper weight.

With the legs gone, the remains of the green mecha could easily pull the now lighter body further up so that it had no danger of falling back down to the game grid. Quickly thereafter the hatch behind the mecha opened and Poro crawled out. Both of the remaining mechas kneeled to pick up the two grounded pilots; Ranma climbed on the red mecha's hand and Poro on the orange mecha's.

Inside the cockpit of the red mecha, Nabiki stared at Ranma as he climbed - climbed, not jumped - to the mecha's shoulder. A roaring "ribbit" was heard when the frog reached the fallen mechas and seeing how many had escaped death. The last lash of the tongue flew over the heads of the four escapees.

Loudspeakers over at the game grid had come active, blaring out an alarm signal. "Illegal program exits from the game grid. Sending out recognizers and tanks."

Poro and Shinobu signaled Nabiki to follow them to the tall, black cliffs rising close to the walls of the game grid. Seen from ground, the tops appeared to nearly reach the mosaic clouds passing far over their heads.

"If we find our way through these memory archive banks, we'll get to the unallocated memory blocks. There we can hide and plan out what we'll do then in peace," Poro explained to the benefit of the three users while gesturing towards the maze of black slabs.

The four had walked for a few minutes when they came across a deep crevice that ran through the archive banks, twenty metres wide ledges framing it on at least three levels below them and another two above them. Poro raised his hand to signal a stop and listened carefully for a while. The chasm carried into their ears the echoes of a muted, sputtering sound that was growing louder and louder.

"Recognizers. Quick, back into the canyons!"

The two mechas scrambled as fast as they could with their passengers a hundred metres in the direction they came from where they turned inside a canyon leading to the chasm. The sound was growing stronger and stronger until after fifteen seconds they saw two huge, black constructs with something akin to square brackets for their bottom half float past their hiding place. After a minute had passed Poro signaled them to get back to the chasm and continue on.

"What were they?" Shinobu asked Poro.

"As I said, recognizers, and that's all I'll say about them until we get to safety," Poro replied. As the encounter with the recognizers had proven, the sounds carried all too well in the chasm, giving the pursuers an easy lead to follow.

"Saotome? Why didn't you simply jump up here from the game grid? We wouldn't have lost the green mecha then," Nabiki asked the man still sitting on the shoulder of her mecha. She might not have known everything about the place they were in, but she did understand that each remaining mecha was a valuable resource. Now that she had seen a violent death of a sort right before her, anything to help them survive were even more important than before.

Ranma fixed a cold gaze where he knew the eyes of the pilot were. "Guess ya know this ain't the real world. But I can't use ki in here, so no roof hopping." Ranma lowered his gaze downwards at the feet of the mecha. "It's not as bad as the ultimate weakness moxibustion mark, but not much better either. Feh."

Nabiki's eyed widened a fraction when she understood what that meant. She had miscalculated and had been ready to leave him down at the game grid. On the betting table there had been Ranma's life. Not even in her dealings with Kinnosuke Kashao had her manipulations carried the risk of anyone actually dying because of her. This was no game, the derezzing of the program piloting the blue mecha vividly playing in her mind. She couldn't shake the thought of her role in Ranma's near demise out of her mind, only push them back for a while. Those thoughts would resurface, though, much too soon for her liking.

* * *

On the far side of the chasm, thirty metres below the fugitives' current level three tanks on patrol had just noticed them. The tanks raised their aim and waited for the firing command from their commander.

The quartet didn't see the shells coming until it was already too late. One hit cut off the top of orange mecha's head, sending the mecha himself on the ground on his back. Another one struck the red mecha's left leg, ripping it off at the hip. The third shot struck the red mecha's left shoulder, the momentum sending the mecha on an uncontrolled pirouette on the one remaining leg. Ranma, who had been standing on the mecha's right shoulder, only barely managed to hold on. After the first two spins, however, he could foresee the mecha would topple down the chasm, which meant a fall of at least fifty metres - taking Nabiki with it unless she immediately got out of the mecha.

Ranma understood the speed at which he had to act. When he had first woken up in the holding pits, he felt something instead of his usual ki reservoirs. As he attempted to pull himself closer to the hatch to the cockpit of the mecha, he was also grasping for straws - this weird feeling included. Then, the spin slowed down. Not one to look the gift horse in the mouth, he quickly moved to open the hatch.

Inside the hatch, he saw Nabiki nearly frozen on the pilot's seat, her face turned away so that he couldn't see her terrified expression. The bodysuits didn't have a collar, so Ranma couldn't only drag her out by pulling on that. No, he'd have to place his hands lower, below her armpits, before he could pull her out and hope she wouldn't take offense to it. Acting rather than thinking things over any longer, he wormed his arms below hers and began pulling her up. He offhandedly noticed that her freed limbs moved slowly, as if floating in molasses, before he had taken hold of her in his arms and jumped down on top of the prone orange mecha. As he touched down, he turned around to see the crippled mecha continue his dance of death, the rotations picking up speed again before the robot finally fell down the chasm.

Poro, who had been on the hand of Shinobu's mecha before the tanks had fired at them, was now staring in awe at the pigtailed martial artist. Ranma knelt and set Nabiki on the ground, only now noticing how he had had his hands a bit too close to her chest, and quickly let go of her. But as he expected her to lash out at him any moment now, he finally noticed her still terrified face, staring into nothingness.

"You okay, Nabiki?" Ranma braved. There was no answer.

"Nabiki?"

Nabiki slowly came out of the shock and attempted to focus her gaze on Ranma.

"How... how did you do that, Saotome?"

"I'd like to know that as well, Ranma," Poro said, a questioning frown on his face.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I mean, you moved faster than a light cycle on a speed up, that's what I mean!"

"Help me out of here!" a muffled voice came from inside the wrecked orange mecha. Taking this diversion as a small blessing, Ranma moved over to help Shinobu out. They'd have to hurry if they wanted to get to the safe area before the tanks requested for reinforcements to check in on the wrecks.

* * *

Over at System Core the lord of the mainframe and MCP's highest-ranking vassal on this system, Kernel, was watching the system load graphs. A few microcycles ago the CPU load alarm had triggered for the second time after Kernel had been compiled on this system. One time was an anomaly. Two times meant there was a program bug to hunt down.

The system monitor programs were busy tracking down the program that had been changing program priorities without proper authorization. Such crime was punishable by deresolution, but only after a thorough debugging session at the quarantine zone. Then, one of the monitor programs cracked a smile.

"Kernel, we have identified the conscript. Program name: . MCP designated locations: the holding pits and the game grids. Current location: memory archive banks."

* * *

Akane's eyes glinted with glee as she waited outside the school gym. All day long, she had been following Ukyo, waiting for her to slip up and show that she knew where Ranma was. Ukyo had managed to escape her only for the lunch break, but once she returned, she didn't let her out of her sight again.

Now, she had again missed a potentially important lead - she had seen Eiko eavesdropping on Ukyo and Haruo and couldn't get any closer herself. But at least she knew she could get her information from Eiko, so she set out to follow her instead.

Akane had heard Toshiko's query in the classroom before lunch break, even if not the whole discussion. Something had happened yesterday, and she was positive it had to do with Ranma.

When Eiko got out from the gym hall, Akane confronted her.

"Eiko. What was Ukyo talking about with Haruo?" she demanded.

"Akane." Eiko knew she'd have to be careful with her lest she incur Nabiki's wrath - and in particular not to ask money for information.

So much for Ukyo and MCP's plans to keep a lid on the situation.

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_Omake (based on the idea by Raneko):_

Kyu and Yosuke had wide grins on their faces. Now that they had found out they could play Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial in co-operative mode with two machines, the Frisbee Girl and the Moneydrain Girl would not stand a chance against their combined charm.

Fast-forward ten minutes.

Once again, "Game Over" flashed on the two screens. This time, however, the screens showed the Frisbee Girl and the Moneydrain Girl tangled in a passionate lip lock. Under the picture the screens said: "Due to your bumbling dating practices you have converted these two lovely girls into devout life-long lesbians."

Both boys stared at the two figures until Kyu broke the silence. "Umm.. did we lose or win?" Yosuke wiped some drool away from his chin before answering. "Shush. Did you have your camera with you?"

* * *

_Omake by crystlshake:_

Tatewaki Kuno strode through the doors with purpose. His eyes filled with determination, his heart filled with purpose, and his pockets filled with yen. Today he, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High, would prove triumphant in his quest to free the beauteous pigtailed girl.

Eight tension filled hours and 60,000 yen later...

His palms were slick with sweat as he tightly gripped the weapon at his disposal. He would deny it to any other but his heart was gripped with apprehension and worry. This was his last chance. If he failed now he may never see the pigtailed girl again. The foul sorcerer had finally pulled out all the stops but he had valiently fought on against the ever increasing waves of minions sent to stop him with the pressures of time pushing him to the limits of his reflexes. He stood at the pinnacle, the point of no return. One wrong move and what was assuredly the final obstacle in his way would forever prevent him from his destiny.

His enemy moved! Like a bullet he raced forward, intent on his goal, blood pounding in his ears at the rush of the final confrontation. Quick as lightning he struck, sending the monster to its demise. Swelling with pride at his accomplishment he strode forward to claim his prize and his destiny.

He was stopped just short of embracing his beloved. Fury warred with grief as he was denied by one last trick! Then she spoke. The words turned his blood to ice and behold, it was as if the great Blue Thunder had been slain! He gasped as their meaning registered and openly wept. He had failed! How could the heavens torture one as virtuous as he so?

The Encom Arcade security guards sighed at what had become a common occurrence over the last two weeks. Resignedly they helped the young man from the floor and escorted him to the exit.

As Tatewaki bemoaned his failure he cast one forlorn look back at the arcade machine that so taunted him and the words that tore his soul. Firming his resolve as he walked away he resigned himself to his fate. He would have to throw himself into practice to overcome the limits time placed on him, and from the looks of his significantly lighter wallet come better prepared. As he attempted to rally his spirit the mocking words of the sorcerer echoed in his head and he shed a tear at his failure.

The princess is in another castle.

* * *

_**AN:** Well... I guess I was badly mistaken. Pretty much all I needed to change for this were the scenes with Shinobu and add only a little more flesh to the real world scenes._


	4. Synchronization

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

A scowl marred Eiko's face as she was returning back to the computer club meeting. It was rare for her to express her feelings this openly, but still, with no one there to see her, the matter of letting her guard down was of no importance.

She had strided to the gym building with the intent of making a good amount of money in Nabiki's absence. Of course, since Ukyo already had the full inside scoop on the matter, she didn't expect to match Nabiki's usual turnout. Kuno did pay the usual fee, and if she had been quick, she might've had the time to sell the information to the Ranma fanclub before their meeting disassembled.

But the confrontation with Akane had botched up that plan. It had cost her a quarter of an hour, first attempting to evade Akane before ending up telling everything she had heard Ukyo talk with Haruo... for free. By the time she got to the classroom that held the Ranma fanclub meeting, the meeting itself had already been disbanded, probably because no one had anything new to tell about Ranma.

Haruo was sitting behind the teacher's desk talking with Ukyo, who had moved a chair from a student desk to sit opposite to him. The two had talked about their options for a while when Eiko entered the classroom. The rest of the club had already left home, leaving the two no need to speak in hushed tones.

"Eiko, come in here," Haruo called. "Ukyo here," he waved his hand grandiously at the girl in question, "has agreed to be the club chef for the next three months... if we succeed in a challenge she gave us."

Challenges - Haruo lived for them, Eiko recalled. She let a small smile appear on her face. But what was Ukyo doing... in... oh darn it all. "Nice going, Eiko... it sure will turn out a challenge after getting Kuno and Akane involved," she silently cursed.

On the outside she kept her expression and jumped onto Haruo's lap. "And don't we both just love challenges? So, what's it all about?" she asked and gave a peck on Haruo's cheek, the smile never leaving her face.

* * *

The three Users and Poro had almost made their out of the memory archive bank canyons. The trip hadn't been a short one after they had lost their transportation, and constantly dodging recognizer and tank squads looking for them didn't help them travel any faster, or at least not constantly in the right direction. The walk of five hours did give the four time to reflect, as Poro's recommendation to remain silent was taken to heart.

Her husband and in-laws now last on her mind, Shinobu wondered what was going on with Ranma and Nabiki. The latter had said Ranma was engaged to her sister, but Shinobu felt there was something off in how the two acted, and it wasn't only because of their current predicament. Maybe it was just her, but she expected future in-laws to get along better than these two.

Now that she thought about it, Nabiki had said she had been searching for Ranma, who had disappeared well before they ended up in the digital world. Ranma must've come here before they did, so maybe he knew more of why they were in here?

Nabiki's mind was no longer preoccupied only by the misassessment when escaping the game grid. Yes, that was still on her mind, but she had pushed it back and put up her usual facade. She, too, believed that Ranma had been here longer than her, but what had he learned? And why had she been pulled into this mess as well? Once the four got into safety, they'd need to have a small... discussion on exactly what had happened. Especially about how he pulled her out of the mecha.

Ranma's latest stunt was very much on Poro's mind as well. No normal program could've done that. No normal program should've done it either, as now he was pretty certain Kernel had already dispatched even more recognizers, tanks and protocol guards to seek the fugitives. He didn't know what system the three had come from, but if he stuck with them, in the end, he might get back to his own system.

The person on everybody else's mind had been thinking of the mysterious rescue operation as well. Poro had said he had moved faster than anyone, but in his opinion he hadn't moved any faster than usual without ki. But what about the changes in the speed at which the mecha had spun? And what about that odd something he felt when he tried to use his ki, which just wasn't there?

Poro broke everyone from their reveries as he noted they had come to their destination: the unallocated memory blocks. The canyons they had walked through had been lined with tall black blocks laid out in an orderly fashion, but in contrast, these memory blocks were littered with small smoky grey slabs, slates, prisms and blocks, all laid out in one merry, seemingly chaotic fashion, and with glittering bluish edges by which small pulses travelled at a slow pace. At the bottom of a nearby pit, the remnants of a wrecked tank were strewn around.

The four wandered deeper into the rugged terrain. Rubble, tall cliffs and cave formations covered the area. At the same time, Ranma was under interrogation. Shinobu and Nabiki had agreed to ask Ranma later, when Poro was not present, of how he had ended up inside the computer, but that didn't keep Nabiki silent on all topics.

"Ranma, how did you get Nabiki out of the mecha?" Poro asked as he helped Shinobu climb up a small cliffside. This also had Nabiki's ears perked at Ranma's direction.

"Well, the mecha spun slower and I already was on the mecha, so it wasn't that tough for me ta pull her outta there," Ranma replied, some of his pride seeping through.

Poro and Nabiki looked incredulously at Ranma. Poro knew what he had seen and Nabiki knew what she had felt. Unlike Poro, however, Nabiki had also the benefit of knowing Ranma was horrendous at lying, and Ranma truly seemed to believe what he was saying.

Nabiki stepped onto a long, narrow slab acting as a bridge over a gap between two large boulders and voiced her opinion. An explanation formed in her mind. "Ranma, got any idea who Einstein was?"

"Uhh... not a martial artist?"

If she hadn't been using her hands to balance herself on the bridge, Nabiki would've slapped herself on the head. The long fall down would've been quite painful, though. "Now, why I am I not surprised of that reply?" she thought.

"Albert Einstein was a physicist, and one saying frequently credited to him is that everything is relative," Nabiki expounded as she stepped off the bridge safely.

"Relative? As in family? Are ya saying I'm related to the Kunos?" Ranma nearly shouted as it was his turn to step on the bridge. It was Nabiki's luck that she was already on safer ground as her step faltered. How did he reach that conclusion? A bit off to the side, Shinobu was silently wondering who these Kunos were. She also had a strange feeling she was better off not knowing them.

"No, you fool! In this case, I meant that for different observers time can run at different speed," Nabiki said as she began climbing a slight slope onto a ridge to follow Poro. She doubted it was worth it to explain to Ranma the most commonly known results of the theory of relativity; that's what the teachers at Furinkan High were for. Well, some of them at least.

"So what's this gotta do with anything?"

At times, Nabiki felt talking with Ranma was like leading a stubborn mule through an obstacle course, dangling a bunch of carrots before his head. What a fitting equine analogue it was. "You said the robot slowed down its spins?" At Ranma's nod she continued, "Was it only the robot or did you notice something else slowing down as well?"

Ranma strided up the ridge and thought over what Nabiki was asking. Shinobu's mecha had already settled down by the time the spinning slowed down, Poro seemed to be pretty much out of it anyway, so he wasn't expected to move much. Now, what else was there that did move at all? The sky was one alternative, but he hadn't paid any attention to it at the time. He turned to look back at Nabiki. Nabiki. That's it.

"You," Ranma replied.

Nabiki, whom he had by now already passed, raised her head and her eyebrow at him in a silent question.

"In the cockpit, ya just seemed to move a bit sluggish, that's all," he elaborated. Nabiki kept her expression.

"I mean, it was like ya were floating in tar or something, almost like," he continued, before realising, "like in slow motion."

Nabiki grinned. Very much like leading a mule to a goal. Shinobu and Poro had also listened to this discussion, the former relating the happened to the wire fu movies she had seen whereas the latter silently wondered exactly what did Ranma's identity disc contain. After all, the disc recorded everything a program did and learned. "Yes, it would be most interesting to see." Then with a grim undertone he added, "Especially if you were Kernel or MCP."

Driven by this minor success, the mercenary girl asked a few more probing questions from Ranma. To the disappointment and frustration of both her and Poro, they couldn't get anything more useful out of him. Regardless, this had given Ranma the starting point to think over the incident.

This wasn't a ki-driven technique, he understood that much. But he did try to do something like that. And there was something - something he couldn't name out there. He tried reaching for it in his mind as he followed the rest of the troupe on autopilot. Whatever it was, it was much fainter and weaker than it had been before, pulsing further away in the distance of his mind's eye.

He looked around him. The area was still pretty much as messed up as it had been. In the distance he saw a red glowing line shooting from the ground to the sky from a building whose shape vaguely resembled that of a horse shoe. Ranma was about to ask Poro what that was, but he was already talking with Nabiki. Instead he let his gaze wander some more for a while. Down the ridge they had been walking on Ranma saw something glitter, like in the ice cream and watermelon he had eaten on the game grid simulating a park. Nabiki had just turned to talk to Shinobu, so he addressed Poro.

"Hey Poro, that sparkly stuff, what is it?"

"That, Ranma, is a source pool, and that's where we're going now to take a break," he said, a grin growing on his face, and began descending towards the sparkling pool. The Users shrugged and followed him back down the hillside.

As the pool reminded Ranma of the food he had eaten inside the game grid, he realized that other than the time the avatar had tried hitting on him... then her, he hadn't eaten anything in here. The Saotome stomach should've made itself known already before he was shipped to the diskette drive, but now, days later, it still hadn't made a single complaint. This was not natural.

Poro reached the pool and took out his identity disc from behind his back. The disc served as a saucer as he drank the liquid, the circuitry patterns on his body lighting up. "Ahh... hey you, don't just stand there," he called at the rest of the group and waved them to come closer. "The Power here will do you a lot of good."

Ranma was a bit skeptical about getting too close to anything that resembled water, even if it was called Power instead of water. However, the choice was made for him, as Shinobu tripped on a small block behind his back and upon falling pushed Ranma into the source pool.

Shinobu stared at the thorougly soaked boy-turned-girl who was now spitting Power from her mouth like a fountain. Nabiki had the insufferable smirk on her face. "You never get a break, do you, Ranma?"

Poro, who had seen the entire exchange, asked, "Where did Ranma go and how did Ranko get here?" With a hint of cold steel in his voice, he asked, "Are you one of MCP's spyware?"

Nabiki stared at Ranma and Poro, the latter more than the former. He couldn't have missed the change, not two metres away right in front of his eyes? Sigh. And she thought there were no Kunos in here.

* * *

Back in Furinkan High, Ukyo and Haruo had finished "informing" Eiko of what their task was. She had only one more question to ask from Ukyo and Haruo. "So, what's the plan?"

"First off, we're going to check the arcade ourselves," Haruo said with a wide grin, which soon was mirrored on Eiko's face as well. Haruo imperceptibly nudged his head at Ukyo. Eiko's smirk only grew wider as the two turned to face their 'employer'.

Ukyo touched the spatula on her back, the episode from the previous night not yet all forgotten from her mind. If the guards at the arcade considered her now an unwelcome person... they'd have to be re-educated. No one was keeping her from saving her Ranchan! It was then that she noticed the way the two were grinning at her.

"No," she said.

"Oh yes," both computer specialists said in unison, their smirks growing ever wider.

"I don't have that much money to spend around! You pay for your own games!"

Not too far away, Kuno was walking to his home. The information the lackey of the insufferable Nabiki Tendo had supplied him with left him pondering what steps to take next. Unlike her mistress, the girl hadn't offered any advice on how to proceed - not that he expected to get it for any less than five thousand yen.

He frowned as he recalled that Nabiki Tendo had been absent from school that day. Rusty gears creaked and turned in his head, but ground to an abrupt halt as he noticed a one hundred yen coin on the sidewalk.

Yes, certainly this was a sign from the spirits! He would find his ensorcelled love in the arcade on his own and protect her fiery yet delicate person from whatever had imprisoned her in those cold, unfeeling shells of plastic, wood and silicon.

Cue foreboding rumble of thunder in the distance.

* * *

"No, Ran...ko is not spyware," Nabiki explained Poro for the third time.

Poro still couldn't believe it, even if a third party said it. A few metres away Ranma mused this was better than how MCP dealt with it, since he had given up shooting hostile glares at her. He'd even understood that Ranma and Ranko would never be seen together - but why was it so difficult to accept that Ranma was Ranko? That went over both Ranma and Nabiki's heads.

Well, at least he hadn't started spewing bad poetry.

Ranma was having a bit better luck explaining the curse to Shinobu. Both had climbed out of the pool and were now having a 'relatively' calm discussion. Magical curses and multiple engagements didn't really fit in her view of the world of few hardships and where most things were controlled so that chaos had little foothold. Still, it looked like no mallet, proverbial or not, would be making an appearance.

"- and don't ya start thinkin' I like being a girl for the rest of the time I'm in here. Why the big red face has something against me, I dunno."

With the revelation that Ranma was actually Ranko, the one person who Shinobu knew to be somehow involved in why they ended up inside the digital world in the first place, her ire was dissipating. Having now a face to connect to the name, blaming her was now harder. This didn't mean she wasn't wary of him... her. She would give Ranma the benefit of the doubt, but only for now.

Ranma watched in surprise as the woman opposite to her was calming down. She wasn't used to resolving arguments by talking, after all. No, usually the arguments only escalated until someone got lost, was knocked out or was punted skywards.

It was only a brief flash in her mind, shorter than a blink of an eye, but the image of a then long-haired girl with black hair arguing with her derailed her thoughts. Akane. Why did she have to think of her right now?

Shinobu watched as Ranma averted her eyes, her face assuming an expression of longing. The pigtailed girl then shook her head to clear her thoughts and returned her attention to Shinobu.

By now, Nabiki had given up her attempts to explain the curse to Poro, so the two of them had begun walking towards Ranma and Shinobu. Ranma felt she was done with Shinobu, too. She was already moving to stand up when Nabiki spoke.

"Don't get up, Ranko. We need to talk with you," she said, emphasizing the name. She admitted Poro was the only one of them who knew his way around here, and for that reason he had to listen to their discussion. Shinobu, on the other hand, might have been not so well-versed in computers, but she knew more of the people in Encom than anyone else present. And even if Shinobu didn't believe Encom or its employees were directly involved in the events, she was keeping her mind open.

Poro and Nabiki sat down next to Ranma and Shinobu, who had now moved a bit to the side so that she could lean against a tall block.

"So, how did you end up in here," Nabiki directed her first question towards Ranma.

"Ya remember the debt I paid back 'bout a week ago? Well, I got most of the money in advance for doing some basic kata with a few stickers on."

"Motion capture," Shinobu interjected.

"That. Two days back, this one man, Nobuo something, calls me an' asks if I want to do another session."

Nabiki nodded to herself. This was the call she listened to on the landline extension. Keeping her cards close to her vest, she nodded to Ranma to prompt her to continue with her recount. At a later time, she'd confront her about the Tendo share of the money earned from the recording sessions.

"Well, at the labs, there weren't any but the voice in the loudspeaker there. He told me to get back to the recordin' area and once I was there, zap!"

"Wait wait wait, you mean you didn't see anyone? Who opened the blast doors then, or the outer doors even?" Shinobu was surprised. Encom labs had very tight security rules for the people working there, and even tighter if you included MCP overseeing all of it.

"No one, they just opened on their own when I walked up to them."

"That's not how things are supposed to happen! I mean, the security rules have already been violated in more ways that I know. No visitor is ever left unsupervised, the blast doors may not just 'open on their own' and in general, no new guests are permitted in after the front doors are locked at six pm!"

Exasperated, Shinobu, who had stood up in her overexcitement, sat heavily back down. What good were the rules if they weren't being followed? Apparently, this branch of the company had to have been targeted by industrial espionage and there was a mole deep undercover already; it was the only thing she could think of that explained this.

A thought she didn't even want to consider popped up in her mind. What about MCP? Why didn't the last line of their company security do anything?

"Back on topic, a bright beam struck me and I woke up in a cell." Deciding to conveniently cut off a few of the more embarrassing events such as being zapped unconscious more times than she cared for, he skipped over to the 'trial'.

"The big red head, Master Control something Poro said his name was, babbled something about me breaking some laws of maths or somesuch."

"Master Control Program?" Shinobu queried, feeling a cold pit forming in her stomach.

"Yah, that's the one."

Shinobu wasn't a stupid person, even if she didn't hold a college degree. Even though she worked only at the receptionist's desk, her terminal there was connected to MCP. MCP could've edited the personnel records. MCP could've handled the lab security systems so that nothing had appeared amiss. All leads pointed to him. Him. It felt strange, wrong even, to refer to a computer program as a person, but in here it didn't feel all that out of place.

She tossed aside that train of thought. If MCP was as much of a big shot here as she had the impression of, they were in deeper trouble than she had cared for. Naturally, being imprisoned in the digital world was trouble enough, but this piece of news only showed how much worse than she had thought the things could get in there.

As Shinobu's shoulders drooped, Poro was thinking to himself. Even if he was rather lethargic and impassive for a program, something about these three programs and Ranma just wouldn't let go of his attention. Ranma had said he was a martial artist, but what would a program by that description do? The program who had most likely broken more than a few of the constraints Kernel had put on program execution. No, whatever it was that he executed when he pulled Nabiki out of the mecha wreck was not within normal parameters.

Another point was that of the four, only Shinobu appeared to know who MCP was. Anyone on the system must have heard or known about him, but not Ranma, Ranko or Nabiki. Although, Ranma had met him before he was sent here, but he still had no idea who the "big red face" had been. Poro gave a small chortle at the memory of this alias.

Poro didn't know enough of Nabiki to form a conclusion what manner of program she was. Still, her ignorance of the system state was hinting that she likely wasn't a program of standard configuration either. She also had known Ranma and Ranko before they were transferred to this mainframe, but what exactly was their connection?

Shinobu might've been a normal program, but for some reason, he doubted that. "Guilty by association," some might say, but she understood too well what the others were talking about. In their discussion, many nouns Poro had never heard of before had popped up like money and kata, but she had followed the discussion without a hitch.

"You're not normal programs, right? But what are you then?"

His interjection cut short the discussion the three Users had been in.

Nabiki and Shinobu took a look at each other, then at Ranma, who had raised her hand and was opening her mouth to answer.

"I th_mmhph_!"

The rest was muffled by Nabiki's hand that had suddenly covered Ranma's mouth. Above her hand, Ranma's eyes gave an angry glare at the girl with pageboy hair cut.

"Excuse us for a minute," Shinobu asked Poro before moving over to Ranma and Nabiki herself.

The three huddled together, and conversed in low, whispered tones. Every now and then, Nabiki cast a quick look at Poro, as if to ascertain he hadn't moved any closer. Something of a grin could have been seen forming on the edges of her mouth, even though she was definitely trying to keep her features expressionless.

Poro had moved back to the source pool to indulge in the glimmering liquid while he waited for the three to finish their talk. He scooped some Power from the pool with his identity disc and slowly sipped it, not in the slightest hurry for their break to end. Far ahead of him, the red transmission beam from an IO tower crossed the horizon and vanished into the black nothingness high above their heads. The beam appeared to remain still, not a single bit transferring through it. It only made him realize how much in isolation the system was. Getting out of here would be a problem.

"Poro?"

He turned his head at Shinobu. Ranko and Nabiki were beside her, their impromptu negotiations already over.

Nabiki, her face now missing the grin it previously had, took up the bat. "You are right. We aren't programs. We are what you would call Users."

Poro raised one of his eyebrows, then the other. Finally, he began chuckling as the three put-down Users watched him.

"That's one reaaally tall tale you're weaving, you know? Piece of malware with access to system functions I could've believed. Corrupted pieces of an obsolete Kernel, maybe. But Users?"

Nabiki's mouth had twisted into a thin line in displeasure. "Are you done?"

"Are you?" came Poro's sobered reply.

"What's wrong with the truth, not good enough for you?"

Poro glared at the three in front of him. It was as if they didn't understand just how laughable their claim was. Users? Here in this system? And how could they be so... clueless?

A nagging uncertainty began to form in the back of his header. He had never heard of anyone actually seeing a User; at best, they had heard their voices in IO towers. Was it even possible for them never before to have come to the digital world?

That would explain some things, but right now he was the lone skeptic of the group that had appeared to agree to that absurd statement of them being Users. No, he had no option of blindly trusting them, especially once you added the mess with Ranma and Ranko.

"You think I'm going to take that for the truth without anything backing up your claims?"

A bit to the side of the two arguing, Ranma sat down, a thoughtful frown on his face, as she tuned out the arguing between Nabiki and Poro. If Poro wanted proof, she'd give him some proof. But what? If they were supposed to be gods, what were they supposed to do?

Miracles and all that flashy stuff would've been good, but she didn't know how to pull that off. Sure, she had managed to do something different when she pulled Nabiki out of her mecha, but it was a different thing to do it again intentionally.

Miracles... well, her curse didn't faze him in the least, even if it was because he appeared to deny anything even remotely linking to it.

At this point, anyone watching her face would've noticed her face lit up like a Christmas tree. As it was, though, her realization of the possibility of removing her curse went unnoticed in the digital world. Still, she now had not only one but two good, very good, reasons to find out what her limits were in here.

Ranma decided to test one of her theories. Like when she had rescued Nabiki from the mecha, she concentrated on reaching for that something she had felt. Like before they had come to the pool, the presence was relatively weak, but it might have been slightly stronger than before. She dove into her mind, attempting to locate what that feeling was.

To an external observer, it appeared like she had been sitting still for several minutes. To Ranma, it felt like she had been searching for hours, but giving up was not an option, not when it was about the curse or even getting changed back to her male form. The spark she had been attempting to reach seemed to avert her approaches, never coming any closer. When the direct approach didn't work, she began to weave her way there through an imaginary obstacle course in three dimensions.

Whatever it was that she was doing, it appeared to pay off. Finally, she saw a spark in the distance that emanated the aura of the presence she had been looking for slightly increase in its luminosity. Elated, she picked up her pace and approached the spark within an arm's distance.

In her mind's eye she saw it now as a glowing blob, whose contours constantly shifted. She reached for it with an imaginary hand, but it always avoided her touch. For a few more minutes, she continued to try reaching for it before trying another approach. Did she need to touch it? What if she only had to follow and change its shape? She let her hands move up and down beside the amorphous sphere, which squeezed the sphere flatter, now more closely resembling a round loaf of bread. A subtle swipe upwards on both hands, all the while bringing the hands closer together, gave the lump the shape of a teardrop.

She let her imaginary hands down. The energy was malleable, easily even, but the significance of the different shapes evaded her. Another important on top of her mind was if it was possible for her to project it outside of her?

Ranma's consciousness returned smoothly back to the digital reality. She now knew what the energy was and where it was. Maybe she could already do something with what she had noticed?

She stood up from her meditative pose and walked away, turning behind a large block which hid her from the eyes of others. Poro had laid back down on his back to casually lounge, half-heartedly listening to Nabiki and Shinobu talking after their argument had whittled down to nothing.

Soon, two thumps were heard from where Ranma had gone. The first thump, not much different from the splat of a fist striking a wall of stone, carried with it a strange, vibrating echo. It almost sounded like there was a pattern hidden in it, but before any of the three people listening to it could figure it out, the sound had already become muted. The second thump was much like the first one, only without the trailing sound.

As Poro and the two Users watched at the boulder, in half a second, something not unlike a Mandelbrot fractal appeared on all surfaces of the slab, eating away the block itself. A second later, the boulder had vanished and behind it lay unconscious Ranma, the blue glow on her suit practically gone.

As she looked over at the unconscious martial artist, Nabiki certainly hadn't forgotten the ambush in the canyon and how Ranma had saved her, and for her staying in debt was something to avoid at all costs. Even if she enjoyed playing pranks on Ranma, this hardly was an opportunity to make fun of her if she wanted to survive. That in mind, she forcefully pulled Poro on his feet and then dragged him with her to Ranma's prone form.

* * *

The Liberate Ranma Squad, that is to say Ukyo, Haruo and Eiko, had reached a compromise and had now reached the arcade. Ukyo would pay first five games for all of them, but not all. She let out a deep sigh. This was getting even more expensive than she had thought.

As the trio stepped inside, the guards took note of Ukyo. They wouldn't throw her out - yet. But at the first sign of the events from yesterday making an encore appearance, they were instructed to immediately intervene, bad PR or not. Letting raving lunatics roam there freely just happened to be not only bad PR but also a danger to their game machines.

Haruo took command as soon as the squad got inside. "Ukyo, you check the okonomiyaki game. Eiko, Tokyo Kaiju Rumble. I'll see to the Fist of Justice myself."

Half an hour later, the three had finished their games to have a short debriefing, which turned out very brief.

"No Ranchan?"

"No," both Eiko and Haruo replied before turning to different games to continue their search.

Elsewhere in the arcade, two hapless teenagers were still trying to play the Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial. "If you don't succeed at first, try again." They certainly had tried enough many times, having spent both of their weekly allowances on the game in just two days. Still, it wasn't all in vain, as they were now making progress, as some of the girls in the game had actually agreed to go on dates with them.

"I bet that if I got the redhead to appear again, I'd get to take her on a date as well!" Kyu enthused.

"Dragging her off by her pigtail? Dream on, buddy."

The casual banter of Kyu and Yosuke came to a close as an ominous presence made himself known behind their backs.

"You peasants dare claim my Pigtailed Goddess is game for thy wooing?"

It was not the bokken in Kuno's hands that made the two run like a pack of bloodhounds were on their tails. No, it was the combined effect of the glint in his eyes and the arcs the bokken made when Kuno swung it at them.

Once the knaves had fled like the cowards they were, Kuno turned his noble attention to the game machine that apparently held her beloved imprisoned and took out the massive purse of divine implements of justice - enough coins to play the game until next morning. He was game, and for the undying love of the treeborne kettle girl no price was too great.

* * *

Ranma woke up to feel a drop fall on her lips. It took a while before she registered she was awake. Her mouth felt moist, giving her the impression that drop hadn't been the first one. She opened her eyes to see Poro and Nabiki leaning over her, the latter holding out her hand in front of Ranma's face. She reached again down beside Ranma and gave her a few more drops of the glittering fluid.

A while later, Poro pulled Ranma into a sitting position and gave her his identity disc upside down and and filled with Power. "Drink it," he told her. Still halfway out of it, she noticed that she was now sitting by the same source pool she had fallen in earlier.

As Ranma took the disc and drank the liquid, the glow on the circuitry patterns on her increased, but was still quite far from the lightshow the other three were displaying. She looked at Poro with a question written on her face. Why did they glow like that and what did this liquid have to do with it?

"The Power is what sustains us programs, Ranko. And as for Users like you," at which point Poro nodded his head at Shinobu and Nabiki, "well, it appears to be the same." He took the disc from Ranma and gave her some more of the Power from the source pool.

Ranma's renewed display of powers no program of any kind should've had access to had convinced Poro that maybe there was something to the claims of his three companions. Well, he might just as well go with them until something happened to show that they weren't Users.

As Ranma kept drinking the sparkling liquid, Nabiki thought over what she had exactly seen happen. Before Ranma had gone behind the block and then obliterated it, her glow had been slightly less luminous than that of the others. But after she had fallen to the ground unconscious, it had been practically nonexistent, and the pulses it had even looked... laboured, if some leniency in the use of the word was permitted. There had to be some connection between these things.

There were some things Poro couldn't explain, though. For instance, why had MCP decided to pay such attention to them? And who was this Nobuo Shimizu, even though Nabiki and Shinobu suspected or were practically certain he never existed as anything beyond a file MCP had created in the personnel database?

The Power Ranma had drunk had revived her from the stupor: a quick look at her arms showed the glow had returned to her with interest. She made a quick check on her pool of Power, and if there was something new she could use it on. .

Poro was still sitting next to Ranma, wondering what she was doing with her thousand-yard stare. Then she suddenly fixed her eyes on him, stood up and smirked shortly before disappearing before his eyes. Alarmed, he stood up, only to feel Ranma tapping on his shoulder from behind him.

"I see you feel better now," Poro remarked with dispproval to his voice. Even if Ranko was a User, he didn't appreciate being the target of pranks.

"Yup," Ranma cheerfully replied with a wide smile on her face. He had now some new techniques to learn and create, and they were very impressive even for him. To some extent, she could substitute the ki with Power in her old internal ki techniques, but she didn't expect it to always work perfectly. Still, as this test showed, at least in some cases it worked well enough. She reached for the glow again, noticing that it had again grown weaker. She frowned. This was not good. If it took this much out of his reserves to use this new-found ability, he could use it at most three or four times before she couldn't reach it at all.

Or worse. After she had left to try forcing the... Power out of him, he had done something else. She took a glance at the boulder she had struck with her fist, only to see it was not there. In its place was now a nice pothole. There was no way his normal punch could've just disintegrated the block. Putting one, one and one together, Ranma got three. The missing boulder, the fact that she had attempted to push the Power through her fist into the boulder in question just before her lights went out and that her Power reservoirs had been emptied. Now, how could she repeat that and either make her Power reservoirs larger or its applications cheaper?

Poro and Nabiki watched as Ranma was lost again in a world of her own.

"So, Poro, whereto now?" Nabiki asked. He was the only one there who knew what was what and where, so he'd have to be the guide for them. She didn't like it, but it was the only real alternative to staying cooped up in here.

"No idea," Poro said, and laid himself on his back on the ground.

"What!" Nabiki exclaimed.

"Let's see - this system is pretty much cut off from the other computers; the diskette drive is the only way you can get out. I was brought on this system as well, so I don't have a function or place to go to here either." Still, he believed that with three Users they'd eventually come up with some way of getting away from Kernel and MCP's ire.

"And we'd have no idea of when there's a diskette in the drive and where the diskette is going next. Right," Nabiki acquiesced.

But if they had to stay here, she needed to learn to stand on her own. Her new knowledge of Users and Ranma's show of new skills made her think of a change of career; from a high school student and a future business dealer to a ghost in the computer and a goddess of her own right. With the banks and stock exchanges already embracing the era of computers, this might be the best thing that happened to her... assuming she survived. She cast a good look at Ranma, who was now out of her trance-like state and moving to drink straight from the pool.

"Time to get back to school to ensure longevity," she told herself and approached Ranma. Even if Ranma hadn't taught Akane, she'd better think twice before refusing now. If he didn't, she'd just have to remind him how she could complicate his life once they got back to Nerima.

* * *

In the arcade, the attempts of one Tatewaki Kuno to find his elusive angel with scarlet pigtail did not come to fruition. The women in the game shied away from his magnificent presence, no doubt to make room for the pigtailed goddess. Why else would they have done so, when they could've basked in his overwhelmingly glorious presence? But alas, she remained out of sight. Oh, how the heavens wept of the difficulties fate had laden on the path of their love. His brows scrunched as the realization struck him. No, it hadn't been enough for the vile sorcerer Saotome to have banished her out of this world, but he must have had her imprisoned even further somewhere inside these cans of metal and plastic.

He pulled out his bokken and began the proclamation of his divine fate, which sent those Furinkan High students who had dared to play on the nearby machines scrambling for cover. Those who were not from the same school just wondered why the guy playing Tokyo Kaiju Rumble gave up his four-hour attempt to break the high score so close to his goal.

At the other end of the arcade, Akane only barely heard the unfortunately familiar rumble of thunder outside over the loud games around her. She had come to the arcade with very much the same intentions as Ukyo; for once, she could show Ranma she wasn't always only a helpless damsel in distress and could just as well rescue him. And she'd be damned if she let Ukyo take the center stage this time. The okonomiyaki cooking game and the judges who didn't appreciate the food she had prepared forgotten, she strode to the source of disturbance. Kuno would be just the person she'd expect to try the can opener approach to rescue girl-Ranma.

A while later the security guards had to intervene to remove one unconscious Kuno and one fuming Tendo from the arcade. Collateral damage: only one Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial game booth due to three strikes of Kuno's bokken and one hit from his head.

* * *

Another half an hour had passed before the LRS convened again, still without any results, although Ukyo was somewhat baffled why Mika had now been fighting against flying radioactive camels lobbing okonomiyaki at the teen heroine. Such a surrealistic show was too weird for her taste, but whatever the cause of that might have been, it hardly was relevant without any sightings of Ranchan.

"So, what now?" Ukyo asked.

Haruo and Eiko exchanged looks before gesturing Ukyo to follow them outside the arcade. The guards watched as the three made their way out quietly, and then returned their attention to the kids kicking the pinball machines in frustration.

The three ducked behind the corner of the arcade. There, Eiko and Haruo shot a glance at each other, just to make certain both knew what they were going to do, then nodded once to each other in confirmation. They turned to face Ukyo.

"This night, after the arcade has closed its doors, we'll be making an entrance," Eiko whispered.

"You mean, you're going to break in here? Don't you need to plan this through first?"

"We had plans to hack in here anyway, but that plan was foiled before start. The mainframe here isn't connected anywhere outside the building, so we had to change our plans to physically break in here," Haruo said, also in a whispering tone.

"Now, are you with us?"

Ukyo thought for a while. "In for a penny, in for a pound, they say."

Out loud she said, "I'm in."

* * *

In the holding pits, the protocol guards were preparing to escort yet another program to the game grid. As another guard lowered the force field keeping the program locked in, protocol guard named Fsguard was standing beside the entryway.

"Get moving, conscript," he prompted. The greenish glow on the script wasn't a common occurrence, but that didn't matter. They all derezzed at the game grids all the same anyway... except for the four escaped programs. For some reason, all protocol guards and system utilities had been given orders not to terminate them on sight with the exception of the editor program.

The guard had been in his thoughts for a microcycle when the script cackled and threw a fist at Fsguard, who had to take a step backwards so as not to fall down from the landed hit. The other protocol guards struck quickly struck the insurgent, derezzing him on the spot. Fsguard shrugged. They'd just take another program to the grid instead.

As he moved to the next cell door, the red glow on him was beginning to shift towards green.

* * *

The fluorescent lights of the arcade sign glowed in the night after the arcade itself had closed its doors. The few people passing by in the street didn't see or just didn't pay any attention to the side alley where three high school students were making their entrance. A window whose lock had most conveniently broken earlier in the day opened to admit Ukyo, Haruo and Eiko clad in black inside the arcade hall, the latter two carrying black gym bags.

The first phase of their plan was simple: to find out if Ranma was inside the computer or not. Even though the mainframe itself was behind locked doors, it was of little hindrance as the game machines were not. After all, they were all dumb terminals and in constant connection to the mainframe, each one a loophole in the security a sumo pig would fit through.

In one corner stood the wrecked Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial machine, its screen shattered and frame mangled. Haruo led the three to another similar one beside it. He took a screwdriver from the large bag he had brought with him and expertly opened the back panel. As the game machine had been built on top of a standard build terminal, there was little difficulty in finding out exactly where to plug in the keyboard Eiko had brought with them. After little tinkering the keyboard was perched atop the control panel before the screen.

Haruo and Eiko blinked as the screen changed from the game title screen to a command shell prompt. Ukyo just stared, wondering what was strange about this.

"What's wrong?"

"We're in," Haruo said in disbelief. "We didn't even have to find out the password." He had been expecting to spend a good time cracking the password and now they found out it wasn't even necessary.

"Do you think the game machines are constantly logged in?" Eiko proposed. "I mean, maybe we just took over that session?"

"Yeah... that must be it. But this - this is such a letdown!" he cried as Eiko hugged him from behind and whispered soothing words next to his ear.

Ukyo just stared at the two and wondered why was it such a bad thing if things were easy for once.

After Eiko had managed to calm him, Haruo sniffled and began typing on the keyboard. "Let's see what this lil' honeypot has eaten then," he mumbled before the screen was filled with long string of program names flashing by.

A few tries later, the list had shortened significantly to just a few. Haruo and Eiko shook their heads, not comprehending how this was possible, the former more than the latter, as Eiko had been well into Nabiki's information trading business and knew a good deal of the various insane situations Ranma often ended up in. Still, this was no longer just a convenient way to get free food for the club and a free day at the arcade.

"I'd say we've got a winner. This program, , sounds like what we're looking for," Haruo told the two who were peeking behind his back.

The okonomiyaki chef was elated - they had found Ranma. All the brownie points were hers!

Meanwhile, Eiko pointed one line on the screen to Haruo, who nodded and typed a new command on the prompt. The result displayed the names of three programs, which made the two hackers' eyes widen. "Well, this explains some things," Eiko murmured before turning to Ukyo.

"Ukyo, ever heard of anyone named 'Shinobu Kaneko?'" she asked.

"No, who's she?" Ukyo couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't want Ranchan to know her either.

"Well... Ranma's not alone in there."

Ukyo shoved Haruo by force away from the keyboard. True enough, on the screen were the names of three programs... , and... "Nabiki Tendo? What is _she_ doing in there!"

A few minutes later after Haruo and Eiko had pushed the agitated Ukyo away from the computer, Ukyo stared in wonder as Eiko and Haruo were working on the computer. She couldn't understand half of the words that flew in the air between the two and much less of the text flashing by on the computer screen. Seeing how she was not needed, she decided to find out where the real computer was.

Haruo and Eiko could think of only one way to get to talk with Ranma. Neither of them were his User and, by the looks of things, he didn't even have one, as strange as that was. That made the direct user-program interaction impossible. No, they'd have to open an IO stream and hope he knew how to answer the request.

* * *

Ranma felt something akin to an alarm clock ringing in her head. She didn't know how or why, but she knew what she should do. She pulled herself up from the ground, dusting the imaginary dirt off her bodysuit. Opposite to her, Nabiki was sitting in the same pose.

So far Nabiki hadn't made any progress with User Powers, but she had been expecting that. It hadn't been a quick job for her to learn apply her ki either. On the other hand, she had made some progress herself in conserving Power. It wasn't much, but if she kept up with the progress, things would get better.

This had been why she had agreed to teach Nabiki. On her own, Ranma's Power pool was still far too limited. If she managed to teach Nabiki how to access her own Power, then living _might_ get a bit easier. Even if it appeared rather empty, to them this was a hostile world.

"We need ta get moving."

Shinobu, still somewhat wary of the cursed boy, asked, "Why?"

"Look, I just know I have ta get ta that big red line there," Ranma said and pointed at the line he had seen from the top of the ridge, "an' somehow the name 'luvluv-2' ties in with it," she said before pouting and looking at Nabiki snickering beside her. "Do ya have ta do that?"

"The IO tower. Someone must want to talk to you," Poro interrupted the byplay between the two. It was curious, though, why the IO tower had become active. Whenever he had looked at it earlier, it had been idle, not transmitting a single packet.

"Someone?" Ranma echoed, before her face lit up in recognition. "Ucchan!"

"Ukyo, Ranko?" Nabiki asked with the tone that usually carried the implied threat "if you know what's good for you, keep talking." But now the effect was more lenient with the use of "her" first name instead of surname.

"Yep." Furthermore, Ranma didn't often pick up the subtle nuances either, even if they weren't all that subtle. Or maybe she just ignored them.

"She played a game against a user avatar who knew something only a certain User would know," Poro supplied Nabiki.

"Got hot and heavy with the guy, huh?" Shinobu threw in her opinion, having made the connection between Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial and the terminal login name "luvluv-2". Even she knew the game was aimed at boys, so she naturally assumed Ukyo was a guy who had been playing the game.

Ranma snarled at Shinobu's barb but turned away and began walking towards the tower. Nabiki followed after her, but only after first turning at Shinobu. "Want to know which facts you got wrong? Ten thousand yen after Ranko gets us out of here." Shinobu replied with an incredulous look and a shake of her head.

* * *

A masked man, clad in black, was making his way in the downtown Nerima, doing his best to avoid lit places. To his misfortune, this act only drew more attention to him than otherwise would've been warranted.

The passersby didn't care to stop him, though. He wasn't attacking them, hence, he wasn't their problem. Especially since the man appeared to carry a sheathed long blade with him.

Had someone stopped to listen to the mumblings of the man, they might've had even less reason to worry for their health, as the worry would've been shifted for his mental health instead.

"Oh, why doth the fate test us so? The lowborn curs that restrain you from springing to my arms may keep us apart in the day, but for my fiery warrior-princess, even the stain of using the means of the ninja is but a low price for thy freedom!"

And so, in the middle of the night, Tatewaki Kuno continued on his meandering course towards the Encom arcade.

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_**AN:** This revised chapter was proofread/preread/anything by me alone. So, if you see something badly wrong, please let me know._

_The next chapter will finally have little old content to it. A fair share of this chapter (most scenes in digital world) had to be rewritten because of the change in Shinobu. Nonetheless, the other sections were mostly unchanged and only one all-new scene was added._

_Thanks for weebee for discussing the technical content of this fic with me... my inbox was at best (worst?) bursting at the seams with his PMs; of course, I promptly returned the favour ;-) And once more, Akuma-sama helped me with some plot points._


	5. Infectious

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? Cooper Industries'? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

As Haruo and Eiko were busy, dabbling with the computer terminal while waiting for Ranma to respond to their call, Ukyo was looking around the arcade. Except for the small lights above emergency exits and the small battery-powered lamp Haruo and Eiko had brought with them, the hall was dark.

Half of her mind was preoccupied with other matters, or more specifically, Nabiki. Ukyo had thought that Ranma would've been alone in there, giving her a solid chance to show exactly how reliable she was and how well they worked together.

Shouldn't she be worried about Nabiki and Ranchan being alone in the system?

Her laughter echoed in the near-empty hall, giving Haruo and Eiko a slight scare. Ranchan and Nabiki mixed about as well as oil and water!

But how had Nabiki gotten tangled up in this mess? There was only one reason for which she expected the mercenary girl would've voluntarily become involved, and it was money.

Ranchan had ended up working at her restaurant because Nabiki had demanded him to shorten his debt, but that was last week. Usually, that amount of money should've kept Nabiki sated for two weeks, minimum.

Ukyo let her mind break away from worrying about who was and who wasn't in there with Ranma. The sooner they got Ranma and the others out of there, the less reason she had to brood over such matters.

Her eyes passed the different game booths in the hall. The booths were against the walls and in neat rows back to back in the middle of the room. The power cords met underneath metal covers that led from the machines to power outlets. But half of the cords weren't plugged in the outlets but continued beside the wall, all in the same direction. They all led behind the same door at the back of the arcade.

She approached the door and tried the handle. Locked. Then again, the sign "Staff only" was a giveaway.

Seeing that she had walked around the arcade, she returned to the two hackers, stifling a yawn; the caffeine in the tea she had drunk earlier had already lost its effect. Absently, her gaze fixed on the name appearing on the sides of each game booth. Now where had she heard the name "Encom" before?

* * *

In the digital world, the four fugitives were walking towards the red beam of light that rose from behind the hills. Poro led the way, Ranma and Nabiki trailing him, and Shinobu as the rear guard.

Shinobu's position gave her an excellent view of what Ranma and Nabiki were doing. She might not have known it before, but after hearing Ranma repeat it for the third time, she knew that "martial artists make everything training." Apparently that meant they also make everything training even for non-martial artists.

Right now, Ranma was jumping from one boulder lining their path to the top of another, holding a discful of Power on her hands without one drop spilling to the ground. Behind her, Nabiki was duplicating his feats with little grace. She would either fall slightly short on the jump and fall down on the ground, or she would wave her hands to regain her balance after landing on the uneven rock face.

"Exactly how is this all necessary for my training?" Nabiki wheezed as she once again fell short on her leap.

Ranma spun around on her heels. "Ya got a healthy mind already, but we're gunna make your body healthier! 'sides, ya'll be needing both of 'em. Ya need ta know and control your body well for the techniques I showed ya."

Nabiki gritted her teeth. She hadn't expected Ranma to start training her this hard right away, but thankfully most of the methods she knew Genma had trained Ranma with were absent.

Still, if this was what she had to withstand to be able to stand on her own feet in here, she wouldn't give up. No matter how much the idea of using brute force appalled her, her usual methods of subterfuge and guile were worthless without sufficient background knowledge on the world, and without good questions to ask, Poro was not a great source of information. And she would never let herself be caught helpless, whatever it took to have control on her life.

Noticing Nabiki had pushed herself to the point of collapsing, Ranma jumped backwards to let her take a sip of Power.

A few gulps of the elixir quickly rejuvenated her to the point of being able to continue the exercise. The IO tower was nowhere close yet, and Ranma had planned on stretching the exercise session to end only once they reached the tower.

Ranma looked up at the hill that stood on their way. Getting over it would be enough of exercise by itself for Nabiki without jumping her way up, and she let Nabiki off the hook for now. As for herself, she had also tried learning a new trick.

Since she had no ki in here, she couldn't use her _Pride of the Fierce Tiger_. But she could try projecting the Power inside her outside her body, and that she had already managed to do... except that the end result was only a blob of Power in the same form she had drunk it. But when she tried projecting it _inside_ an object, rather than in the open air, she could repeat her earlier feat of destroying a boulder, or do a parlour trick: let the Power form the circuitry patterns she wanted to on the surface she was touching. Close enough to the patterns she wanted in any case, but it appeared to take only practice to gain better control over how the lines were laid on the block.

The walk on top of the hill took a while, but once there, the vista was striking. The chaos of the free memory area spread spread around them, but from their vantage point they saw the IO tower and the transmission stream right across a structured area, filled with low-rise buildings whose fluorescent red glow was in stark contrast with the blue memory blocks.

In the back of her mind, Ranma felt the call to the tower. It pulled on her attention, letting up only once she turned her eyes away.

As she stood still, simply appreciating the view, Nabiki and Shinobu had already started descending down the hill. She snapped herself back to reality and ran after the two, Poro taking his time in following them, half-heartedly watching the self-proclaimed Users make their way down.

* * *

The border between free and reserved memory was no less clear-cut close up than afar. The cluttered ground and asymmetric, chiseled gargantuan boulders gave way to even black surfaces and buildings, dwarfed by the IO tower and decorated with the omnipresent circuitry motif.

The four walked again in silence and staying off the areas populated by other programs. Ranma with her macho attitude firmly back in place walked ahead of the others. Programs of different kinds walked around them; golden, blue, purple... none of them paid appeared to pay attention to anything that wasn't on their path.

To her surprise, Nabiki felt a tug on her arm and turned around. Latched onto her forearm was a program hunched over, a sickly leer on his face and the yellowish green glow didn't look any healthier. Compared to him, Nabiki considered Gosunkugi a healthy and normal person.

The leer changed into a cackle. Ranma and the others turned to face Nabiki and the program just in time to see Nabiki belt him in the face, sending him down.

Satisfied with the results, she turned back to the others and hastened her pace; making a scene would not help them hide from the protocol guards. The stinging sensation where the program had grabbed her was slowly abating as she rubbed it. She might not be at Ranma's level, but she refused to depend on the help from others.

She cast a glance at their target, still a few kilometers away. At least they would be a step closer to getting back home soon enough.

Poro had led the three to an alley between two buildings, where they found a translucent cube, floating in mid-air. Ranma recalled seeing a similar one back when she passed through the yellow portal, and the guard programs somehow had got their orders from the box. Like back then, green specks floated inside the crate.

The program placed his hand on the box, lighting up one green mote of light. A while later, Poro withdrew his hand.

"The system utilities are searching for us here, too. We'd better finish our business at the tower quickly, or we're certain to get caught."

Nabiki perked up at witnessing this: any means for her to learn more of this world on her own was more than welcome. "How do you know that?"

"You don't know what archive bins are? Right... come here," he said, gesturing at the three Users to lay their hands down on the bin.

"These are archive bins. As for what's inside of them, each of those green packets contains text-formatted information. If you got the proper permission set, you can download the contents of the bin."

Before Poro got to explain how that happened in greater detail, Ranma already attempted to reach a sparkle with Power as it floated closest to her hand. She coaxed the packet for a few microcycles, but then, the contents of the packet slammed themselves into her mind, very nearly making her reel back from the suddenness of it.

"What is COBOL and why's it bad for ya health?"

Then again, no one guaranteed she actually understood what the information meant.

She pulled her hand back and shook her head to clear out the stars from her vision. Beside her, Shinobu and Nabiki were attempting to repeat her success.

After a few microcycles, Shinobu took a step backwards, as she managed to read one of the information parcels.

"Kernel has, quote, broadened the search criteria, end quote, to track us down, and has ordered something called 'direct memory access areas to undergo extensive security scans, and programs with programmed input/output functions to apply operating permissions.' "

"Huh?" Ranma boggled, Nabiki sharing the sentiment but staying quiet.

"It means getting out of this system by the usual media won't be easy," Poro sighed. He shouldn't have been surprised, though; things had been going far too well.

* * *

The glow from the CRT display lit Haruo and Eiko's faces as they sat side by side by the console, leaning on each other. For some reason, it was taking a while for the program to answer to their IO call. They hardly had a problem on how to use the time they found on their hands, as they had opened another game booth and taken over the session in there.

"How do you think Ranma got in there?" Eiko changed the subject of their discussion.

"No clue. But this smells like a... challenge," Haruo replied, then began chuckling to himself.

"Finding out how Ranma got in there?"

"Not as much as finding out how to get him out of there. If it really is him in there anyway."

"Aww, what's this with the skepticism?" Eiko frowned. She wished that it was Ranma in there... and by conjuction Nabiki as well. There weren't many more efficient ways to climb your way up the ladder than pulling your boss out of the fire. "With all the things happening around Ranma, I don't see why this shouldn't be one more mess he's ended up in."

Haruo let his hands down from the keyboard he had been typing on and turned to Eiko, a crooked grin on his face.

"Tell me, when has these messes been resolved _without_ any fighting?"

After a moment of silence and Eiko trying to remember such an event, he continued, "I haven't heard of a single fight yet, and I hope that I don't hear of one either, not as long as we're this involved."

Smirking, Eiko gave Haruo's shoulder a gentle pat. "Aren't you overreacting a bit? Nabiki even lives in the same house and she's never gotten involved unwill..." Eiko's voice trailed off as Haruo raised his eyebrow.

"You were saying?"

Unsurprisingly, Eiko started truly appreciating having brought Ukyo with them.

"Anything new?"

Ukyo's sudden return and question startled Eiko, who attempted to quickly move away, only to fall down on her rear before her boyfriend.

"Aren't _you_ overreacting a bit?" Haruo snickered, slightly amused. Eiko only shot a glare with a pout at him.

* * *

As the four escapees resumed their trip, Poro returned to surveying the scenery, but some of his attention had been riveted by Ranko and Nabiki's behaviour. It was like they were doing something in a pattern, an elaborate algorithm of a kind. Especially what Ranko did was baffling; he instinctively felt there was something like a pattern in what she did, but he couldn't figure it out exactly what it was.

Well, he did recognize the plain bit flip, which appeared to have become more frequent for Nabiki than before. Once again, she was picking herself up from the ground after slipping down from atop a crate.

"Ya okay, Nabiki?"

Off to the side, Shinobu snorted to herself.

"Maybe you're pushing her too far? Not everyone is as gifted as you."

The near silent barb in Shinobu's comment went unnoticed to Ranma and Nabiki, who was now moving to stand back up, all the while holding her head.

"Wait a moment, Ranma," she replied, then blinked a few times.

Slightly fumbling, she walked over to a nearby low block and sat down. It took a while before the colors in her vision returned back to what she expected them to be; the green in the clouds returning to the shiny blue it had been before.

"Oy, are ya okay?"

Nabiki shot a withering glare past Ranma's hand waving before her face.

"Drop it already. Yes, I'm fine, just let me rest for a while. And I don't need more Power, either," she continued as she saw Ranma starting to move the disk-turned-cup with the last remaining drops of Power at her direction.

The frustration Nabiki felt was barely hidden in her voice. She knew she wasn't the most coordinated of people, but the aerobics she had done in the real world certainly hadn't been this much trouble for her. The number of times she had now slipped on her landings had topped a dozen some time ago, and at that point she had already stopped counting them.

She didn't know what was wrong, though. And judging by how Ranma was looking at her, she didn't have a clue either. She couldn't help but to grin.

Shinobu sat down on another rock to watch as Nabiki absently rubbed her wrist. She didn't consider herself a fan of traditional Japanese architecture, but compared to the architecture here, it certainly didn't grow old as quickly. Maybe it was only her, though, for not understanding the function of all the straight lines, designed with elegance clearly taking back seat to something quite different and incompatible. What that something was, she didn't know, and to be frank, she wasn't all that interested in knowing, assuming they got out of here soon.

The first day inside the computer had been a wondrous sight. But as always, the novelty wore off, and in no small part due to them wanting to see their home again. Even the most beautiful of prisons was still a prison, and she wouldn't call this world pretty by a long shot.

It hardly mattered that she liked having things clear-cut and simple in her life, this was taking it too literally. The sharp corners and walls that could've been hewn with a giant ax gave little room for round forms, and where there was anything round, it was always an arc of a circle. Never any other curve.

Even more bothersome was how the same structured rigidness carried over to their bodysuits as well. A disgusted sneer on her face, she glanced at her arms and chest, the same rules governing the layout of the patterns on her bodysuit as in the environment. Well, at least _she_ hadn't become as sharp-edged as the patterns. Edgy, yes, but not sharp-edged.

Then again, what difference did her curves make here? The only real male - Poro was nothing but a program, after all - had shown little to no interest in her body when he had helped her out of the wreck formerly known as her mecha. And even calling Ranma a male would right now be stretching it further than she'd usually bother with.

With a put-off sigh, she let her gaze wander off to the other two Users. The pigtailed girl had her arms crossed under her chest, and even if Shinobu didn't hear their discussion, she could read their body language. Although she had to admit the way Nabiki...

She blinked, then focused her eyes again on Nabiki's body suit.

"Give it up already, Saotome," Nabiki growled out, deep frustration in her voice. She was willing to work for the power to be independent, as she had proven in school and life, But there was a limit to everything, and Ranma was reaching for it with this training.

"And ya wanted me ta waste time on whipping ya ta shape?" the pigtailed girl retorted. As much as she would've wanted denied it, the methods she was using to teach Nabiki were not all that different from Genma's. Unfortunately for her, Nabiki wasn't as easily led as she herself was.

It didn't mean that Nabiki merely shrugged Ranma's words aside, either. Abruptly, she stood up and geared for giving Ranma a good earful of when training went overboard - something Ranma would have to figure out, hopefully before she began teaching at the Tendo dojo - when Shinobu interrupted her.

"Nabiki, have you noticed something wrong with your suit?"

Nabiki returned a questioning look and took a look at her body. It had no tears, the circuitry patterns were still there, it wasn't dirty... "What do you mean?"

"The patterns - they've changed."

"Whaddya mean, changed?"

Shinobu tossed an annoyed glance at Ranma before turning back to Nabiki and explaining, "At the pool, the patterns on all of us were of same hue, but not now."

"They are all still light blue, aren't they?"

Shinobu reached for Ranma's arm and pulled her to herself for demonstration. "Yes, but we all have the exact same hue - except you. And furthermore... the patterns on you..."

"Their shapes've changed," Ranma noted, then pushed herself apart from Shinobu.

"Changed?" Nabiki muttered, and warily looking down at herself.

The glow on her hands was there, light blue, but even she could now see it had a tinge of green to it. But even more troubling was that the patterns had indeed shifted; the lines that had been straight and of constant width had now began bulging and narrowing at various places.

She took on her face an unreadable expression.

"Poro? What does this mean?"

The program cocked his head.

"I do not know. We programs do not change, or at least not usually. Quite many cycles ago, I heard of self-morphing programs, but that piece of information is hardly more than an uninitialized pointer." Noticing the nonplussed faces of the Users, he added, "Probably invalid information."

"Never mind that, it's probably just a flu. Let's get going to the tower and get out of here." Nabiki gave a grin, turned and began walking towards the IO tower, still a good distance away. If it was more than "just a flu," she didn't want to think about it; there was precious little she could do about it. Better not waste time and effort now on something you couldn't deal with, and the sooner they got out of here, the better. Now, if only her head cleared up soon...

"Shinobu?"

"Yes, Poro?"

"What is a flu?"

It was probably for Nabiki's best that she didn't hear this discussion.

* * *

A cycle of walking later, the walls of the IO tower stood before them. The smooth gray walls of the arc-shaped building reached dozens of metres high. The red beam originated from the base of a wing of the input-output tower, the wing hugging the beam and protruding like the radius of the arc inside the protecting cover of the two curved wings.

Nabiki was far from feeling well. A while ago, she had began feeling a throbbing ache in her head, and while it was only a minor annoyance at start, it was only getting worse. She had heard people complain about their migraine, but she had never had one herself. Well, not until now.

Or maybe she simply didn't remember it. She knew only from the photo albums she seldom browsed through with Kasumi that she had been practicing martial arts when she was young, but then gave up. Whatever the reason for that had been, it had completely faded away from her mind, and replaced by other, more recent memories.

Once again, she glared at Ranma, who stopped mid-step she was taking in her direction. No, Nabiki Tendo was going to stand on her own two feet, without the help from her future sister-in-law. Well, this didn't mean she would refuse training Ranma gave her; she'd want Ranma to keep her fingers off of her.

She only hoped she'd manage to do it as well. Her eyes scanned around her, first stopping at Poro, standing furthest away from her. Like she expected, an image flashed in her mind; an image of her latching onto Poro. Even worse was when she looked at Shinobu and Ranma, as similar images strobed in her eyes.

Gritting her teeth, she swore to herself she would not give into whatever was making her think these thoughts. She was in control of herself. She had to be.

A couple of steps away, Ranma turned to face the open entrance to the tower. She felt still the demanding call to the come to the tower, but unlike what she had expected, it hadn't become any stronger than it had been by the pool of Power.

She took a quick look at Nabiki. The older girl had gained a small limp - unnoticeable unless you were paying attention to such things, but ever since Shinobu had pointed out the changes in her, Ranma stopped training Nabiki and kept an eye on her. The colour on her bodysuit was now more clearly different from the rest, a decidedly unhealthy-looking green. The circuitry patterns on her had also kept on changing, now bearing only a little resemblance to an organized network. In its place was a seemingly chaotic criss-cross of green lines, most of them converging to one large splotch on her side.

No, this was no flu. And Ranma only hoped they'd either get out soon or, more preferably, get help to Nabiki. If she didn't, well, the reception at the Tendo home would be downright unpleasant.

Just inside the tower was a large, open room, walls first curving out and then back in to meet at the top of the hall. And at the bottom of the room was a wide, layered pedestal, upon which sat a program, clad in a huge suit. Only the top of the program was visible above the top of the pedestal, making him look like he was trapped by an office desk, his hands barely reaching the keyboard in front of him.

"Dumont," Poro shouted in a greeting.

"Stop where you are. What is your business here?" the old, bearded program replied.

"We need to communicate with a User," he replied, pointing at Ranma, who took a step forward.

"A User? There have not been any User-program communications in many cycles."

"Nonetheless, a User named luvluv-2 is calling him."

Dumont pondered upon this for a while. Most of the time, he sat here in sleep state, waiting for any service requests. And Kernel knew how little he was needed, as was shown when he had applied for the new programmed input-output operating permissions. To undergo the whole process was degrading, let alone how Kernel at considered his application, only to approve it saying, "As if you and your tower are ever going to need the permission."

The system had never been a free one. Dumont knew that there were systems without Kernels and Master Control Programs; there had to be. Why else would his User have programmed him with all the different features, if they were always to be refused by the system monitors?

That he was disgruntled didn't mean he didn't care about the system-wide announcements. Yes, he was well aware that the four programs in the hall with them were the same four programs who had escaped from the game grid some cycles ago.

"You are the four escape units the guard programs have been searching. Do you have any idea in how much trouble you are placing me?"

"This is what the Users want. It is a question of choosing whose orders come first; the Users' or Kernel's."

Dumont's mouth firmed into a thin line. Plotting their creators against their derezzers was always a loaded problem, especially since their desires had often been contradicting, and it appeared that the situation was not changing anytime soon. Even with his sympathy falling squarely on the Users and free programs' side, he was not in the position to help everyone all the time.

"No, it is not. Kernel and his utilities have so far considered the tower simply harmless. I have no reason to make them change their beliefs," Dumont sternly replied. If the system was to be liberated at some point, as he deep in his code hoped, he was not going to squander the resource the tower and himself had to offer in that eventuality.

"So you're gunna throw us out, ain't ya, old man?" Ranma shouted, as she started moving forwards towards the platform.

"Stop where you are, program, and identify yourself," Dumont demanded, as Ranma knelt down and laid her hand on the lowest step.

"What are you doing, Ranko?" Poro demanded, fearing the pigtailed User would disintegrate the platform like the boulder by the source pool. Dumont certainly would not appreciate someone removing the seat he sat on, and without him managing the tower, they couldn't communicate with luvluv-2 anyway.

Ranma ignored the two programs and pushed the Power into the pedestal. Actions spoke louder than words, and whether she admitted it or not, she was a show-off. This was her fight as much as Poro's, and she was not going to stay out of it.

"I ain't no program."

The Power she fed into the pedestal made the glowing lining on the steps flare out in brilliant sapphire blue, blinding everyone else present.

Once the shining had died out and their vision was slowly returning to them, they might've seen the confident smirk returning on Ranma's face.

The lowest layers on the pedestal were no longer simple slabs, a single circuitry line outlining the horizontal surfaces, but now were embedded with criss-crossing patterns.

Ranma gave her work a quick look before fixing her eyes with Dumont's.

"I'm a User."

At the back of the hall, Nabiki chuckled to herself. Ranma certainly was not one for speeches. Still, what Ranma had done surprised her. This was more, much more than simply crumbling a boulder into pieces like at the source pool.

Ranma wasn't all certain what she had done either. But whatever it was, it did look convincing.

"A User? But that - that is preposterous! You cannot expect -"

"And would a normal program be able to do what she did?" Poro struck back.

Silence reigned for a few microcycles as Dumont attempted to come up with a counterargument.

"So how 'bout ya let me go in there?"

Ranma's interjection derailed Dumont's thoughts, and he let out a deep sigh.

"Very well... go," Dumont acquiesced, and gestured behind his back.

With a grin gracing her face, Ranma straightened up even further, if possible, and walked to the archway behind Dumont. At the sight of this, Nabiki turned to Dumont.

"Is he going to talk to... luvluv-2 now?"

"Yes, but - shouldn't you know that, if you're a User?"

Ignoring Dumont's query, Nabiki sprinted over to where Ranma had vanished, and disappeared behind the corner as well.

* * *

The rhythmic sound echoed in the arcade hall as Haruo kept rapping the console casing with his hands, changing the beat and the song every now and then; one forgettable J-rock tune after another. They had been waiting for a while for the connection to Ranma to be established, but it was taking its sweet time.

A beep sounded from the terminal, and lines of text slowly appeared on the blank screen, line by line.

"Oy!

"Hey, I'm talking now!

"You're one who don't want to be disturbed when you're on the phone!

"Whaddya mean it's not the- Ow-ow-ow!"

As the lines paused dropping onto the console screen, the three high school students goggled at the screen. It was like listening to only one side of a conversation, and the one whose words they read sounded like Ranma.

"Lovers' spat?" Haruo suggested, unmindful of the spatula-wielding girl right behind him. To his fortune, Ukyo only ignored his comment. Eiko briefly amused herself by thinking what Nabiki would say about such ideas, but the lines that soon continued dropping on the screen took her attention.

"It ain't my problem if they don't answer you! Bii-dah! OWW!

"Eh, sorry 'bout that - Nabiki wanted ta talk with ya.

"Oy, anybody out there? Ucchan? Luvluv-2? Is this thing on?"

Ranma's nickname for Ukyo finally brought her out of it, and at the next words, a crimson tinge coloured her cheeks. She lunged at the keyboard, pushing Haruo aside from the terminal. She looked around the keyboard, then let out a small yelp of satisfaction, as she found the 'R' key and carefully pressed it with her pointer finger. She grinned upon seeing the letter appear on the screen.

"Now, where's the 'a'...?" she wondered, until Eiko took the keyboard away from her and typed in the missing letters herself.

"We'll do this much faster if you let either me or Haruo type, and I hope you didn't forget we're not exactly supposed to be here?" Eiko told Ukyo, who bristled at the thought of losing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being not only the cute fiancée, but the cute angel of salvation.

"Ranma?" Eiko hit the Return key.

* * *

Inside the IO tower, in the chamber behind Dumont's seat, Ranma stood on a pedestal, looking upwards in a column of light. She slowly rubbed the ear that Nabiki had pulled on, the stinging sensation not yet gone. Right next to her stood Nabiki with crossed arms, also looking towards the light.

To Nabiki's surprise, she recognized the voice that responded to them from the top of the hall; it was one of her informants on the lower grade. On the other hand, she knew Eiko would've been one of the most likely people in her school to find her, considering her hobby of dabbling in computers.

"Ucchan, is that you?"

"This is Eiko from class 1-1. Ukyo is right here," the voice responded back.

"Ehh... so... ya think ya could help us outta here?"

"That's what we came here to do in the first place. How many of you are in there?"

"Me, Nabiki and Shinobu - she's from Encom."

* * *

"Encom?" Ukyo spun around, checking that she really had seen Encom logo on the game booths. Eiko had already begun typing a reply to Ranma.

"Eiko, ask them how they ended in there?" Ukyo requested. She _knew_ she had heard of Encom before, but for the life of her she couldn't remember where.

Eiko finished typing before answering Ukyo. "Already ahead of you," she said with a self-satisfied smirk, then turned to read Ranma's reply on the screen.

And as Ranma once again was reciting her story, Haruo attempted to come up with a plan. Yes, this was indeed a challenge. He grinned. But there hadn't been a challenge that had left him stumped yet, and this was not going to be the first, either.

Their goal of returning Ranma to reality couldn't be done here. The best guess where they could do that was where they had originally ended up inside the virtual world. This wasn't a magic trick or a curse; they would need real expensive high-tech equipment and not only some ink and blood on the floor and walls, coloured candles, incense, and mythical mutterings. Not that Gosunkugi had had many success stories to share, either.

To his knowledge, the equipment required hadn't even hit the stores yet, so the only place they could find the necessary hardware was where they were digitized in the first place. This posed probably their greatest problem: how would they get Ranma, Nabiki and Shinobu from this mainframe to the Encom Labs mainframe? Even if he and Eiko had some experience in getting inside protected networks, they definitely couldn't hack into every system. Sure, he had heard the rumour of him hacking into the JSDF computer system, but that's all it was - a rumour. At least for now.

He stood up from his seat and stretched his back.

"Eiko, I'm going to see what components the mainframe has installed. We'll have to get the three back to Encom mainframe before they can be restored; this place lacks the hardware for that."

"Ah, right. Then I'll keep reading what information Ranma has and brief you later on."

"Good. Hey, Ukyo, come with me."

Ukyo looked at Eiko, then Haruo, before returning to Eiko to say, "You _will_ inform me what Ranchan says, right?"

"Of course."

* * *

Soon after Haruo and Eiko had left, Ranma was finishing her tale.

"- and that's how we got to the tower. But the old geezer here wasn't going to let us talk to ya... but I managed to tell him otherwise."

Eiko sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose with her right hand. If Ranma wasn't embellishing her story, then this misadventure of hers certainly wasn't counter to the norm, she thought, recalling her talk with Haruo why Ukyo was asked to join in the break-in. Regardless, she hoped that all the fighting would stay inside the computer and away from her person.

But as a cold shiver ran down her spine, she couldn't help but to think she had just jinxed it.

* * *

"So, why was it that I couldn't stay and listen to Ranchan's tale?" Ukyo asked, slightly annoyed. as she followed Haruo around the arcade. Haruo, in turn, was tracing where the cables on the floor went, finally ending up at the locked door. A quick try told Haruo that the door was locked, as he expected.

Earlier, when the three students had been in the arcade playing games, he hadn't spent all his time doing nothing but stuffing his - and Ukyo's - coins into the machines, but also had also scouted the insides of the building. It hadn't taken long for him to notice the door with the sign "Staff only", and how the arcade staff going in there dug through their pockets for a key to unlock the door.

"I work with computers, not with real-world locks like this one. That's what for you to do."

"What gave you the idea of me knowing how to pick locks?"

"Not picking - but breaking the locks... or doors."

Ukyo shot another annoyed glare at Haruo; she wasn't a muscle-bound brawler like some, but a martial _artist_. Indiscriminately breaking things was the easy way, but it led nowhere on her art of okonomiyaki cooking. When cutting the garnishes on a board, cutting through the board as well wasn't the recommended course of action, but leaving the cuts short of the table wasn't good either. A delicate measure of power. And to have the cuts produce strips of even length and width, the practitioner also required precision. Both were necessary, and equally important.

Forcing her way through took only force and not precision.

She took out one of her throwing spatulas, tossed it in the air and checked its balance, before throwing it neatly in the crack between the door and the doorframe. With a clang, the spatula cut through the latch, unlocking the door.

The spatula, having not struck deep enough into the doorframe, fell to the ground with a clang. Precision, and power.

With a small smile, Ukyo picked up the fallen spatula and pulled the door open.

"Thank you," Haruo said with a bow to Ukyo as he stepped inside the backroom.

The beams of their torches passed along the walls of the room, revealing a massive complex that occupied with the subprocessing units over half of the large room. All the cables from the main hall lead to various outlets in the lower front panel. And above the panel was a single terminal, and next to it was a diskette drive. Haruo's beam kept moving across the mainframe, until it finally met a name plaque: "Encom MF-1000 Mk2.1"

For him, this was excellent news. He had read of the previous version of this mainframe in the bulletin board system he and other mainframe enthusiasts dialed in frequently, and the knowledge he had on the system was definitely welcome.

Haruo leaped at the terminal, only to notice a prompt for login and password. He knew they didn't have the time to crack the password any longer; they had already spent too long in the arcade. While the morning had not yet dawned, they had no time to dawdle.

He dug around his backpack a while, and pulled out of a small plastic case half a dozen diskettes without labels. Reaching over to place the first diskette into the drive, he told Ukyo, "We'll move them onto these diskettes. I need you to stay here and eject the diskette by pressing this here, and insert the other one. I'll go talk with Ranma about what he'll have to do."

Ukyo's upset shouts were ignored, as Haruo left the room. In her view, _she_ still hadn't done enough to help Ranchan out. Noticing she had already taken steps towards the door, she took a hold of her feelings. She was still the sanest of Ranchan's fiancées, right? It didn't take great insight to see who knew computers and who didn't, not after she had fumbled with the keyboard and tried to type in Ranma's name. Haruo and Eiko, by comparison, knew what they were doing, and Haruo had given her a task she could do.

So, she would do as they asked.

* * *

Haruo walked briskly to the opened game booth, by which Eiko was typing on a keyboard a reply to Ranma.

"Eiko... in brief, what did Ranma have to say?"

"After you and Ukyo left? She said she had been playing different games here in the arcade, and escaped from something called the 'game grid' with Nabiki, Mrs Kaneko and Poro - that's the file stream editor. Mrs Kaneko is actually a receptionist at Encom Labs, but she ended for some reason digitized inside the computer with Nabiki. And guess what - she must have login credentials to the Encom Labs mainframe," Eiko reported, finishing with a wide smirk.

"Really? That only makes things easier for us," Haruo replied with a satisfied smile; not only because they wanted to get the three digitized people on the Encom mainframe, but what they could find out with these credentials themselves.

"Anyway, where did you leave Ukyo?" Eiko asked, now noticing the chef's absence.

"By the computer. There's no modem installed, so we'll have to think over how we're going to transfer them over to the lab mainframe. There was a diskette drive, though, and Ukyo will be there to change the diskettes."

"Switching diskettes got to your nerves, huh?" Eiko teased, knowing quite well how the game Haruo had lately been playing on required him to change the diskette maybe once every fifteen minutes. Still, it was better than to suffer with C-tape drive and multiload - waiting for each level to reload after dying from the cassette drive was not fun, not even with a cup of good tea to drink while waiting.

"That, and she doesn't have to know we're copying more than the three people on these diskettes."

"So, you already know what else you want to copy there?"

"No, but let's get them out first," Haruo said, before scooting next to the keyboard Eiko offered him.

"Ranma? Haruo here."

"Hey, so what are we supposed ta do now?"

"We will store you on diskettes, and the rest will be up to us. As for what you will have to do... ask," Haruo felt foolish even writing it, "Poro." Addressing programs like they were real persons was awkward at best. Sure, he knew some people in the computer club who had given pet names to their computers, usually affectionate girl names - in some cases even talked to them - but they had yet to start giving their programs such names. With the exception of Eliza, of course.

"So, that's it? Ow! What now?" turned up on the screen, prompting Haruo to raise an eyebrow. After a while, Ranma continued.

"Haruo, are ya still there?"

"Yes."

"Nabiki says there's something wrong with 'er."

"What's that?" Haruo typed into the console.

"They wanna know what's yer problem, Nabiki?

"What's your plan this time, Nabs?

"What do you mean you didn't mean it?

"I'm _not_ getting engaged to you again!

"Fine!"

As amusing as reading Ranma's side of the dialogue was to Eiko, Haruo saw time being wasted in idle banter, and quickly typed in a response.

"Wrong in what sense?"

"She says that she's feeling sick... and she says she wants ta hug me! Ya gotta do something!"

For a few precious seconds, silence reigned in the arcade... until Eiko swatted her hands over her and Haruo's mouth to keep their laughter from echoing into Ukyo's ears. Even if they couldn't hear Ranma, they could very well sense the desperation in her reply.

A few more seconds later, Ranma's next line was already appearing on screen.

"And she looks different, too. Like... like another sickly program we saw earlier."

The greatest need to laugh already behind them, the two hackers could only wonder what this meant.

"But you and Mrs Kaneko aren't... affected like Nabiki is?"

"Nah, we're fine."

"We'll see what we can do. Now, talk to Poro," Haruo cringed again as he typed this, "about what you have to do."

That typed, Haruo cut the connection.

* * *

Shinobu and Poro were sitting down on the steps of Dumont's pedestal as Ranma and Shinobu came back to the main hall. Ranma was rubbing her ear, wondering why it still stung. It didn't feel like her ear had fallen asleep - and the whole possibility sounded odd - and she hadn't heard of any pressure points either that could result in this. And it was even less likely that Nabiki knew them.

Shrugging that aside, she turned her head to watch Nabiki stumble behind her. It looked like she was getting worse, looking more and more ready to keel over. Feeling guilt of pushing her too far, which might have caused whatever was happening to her, Ranma walked over to her and set Nabiki's arm around her neck and shoulder to support her.

"I got her," Ranma assured Poro, who had made a gesture of coming closer to her and Nabiki.

"What's wrong with her?" Shinobu asked, unwilling to take a step nearer. And if her eyes weren't lying, the glow on Ranma's suit was changing as well. No, she'd keep a _healthy_ distance to those two, at least as long as Nabiki was only getting worse.

"No idea. I hope Haruo knows what to do with her."

"Haruo who? Was that luvluv-2 him?" Shinobu asked.

Letting Nabiki sit down, Ranma responded, "He and Eiko are from our high school computer club, and they'll help us out of here." Ranma's ego fought against admitting they had and needed outside help, but eventually relented. She could ill afford letting anything bad - well, anything _worse_ - happen to Nabiki, if she wanted to avoid being hammered deep underground, and listen to the preaching panda how she shirked in protecting her future sister-in-law. Or this is how she rationalized it.

On the other hand, Ranma was definitely annoyed of doing only what she was told. Even if she wasn't all that hot on what they handled in school, she always could pride herself on being able live off the land quite well on her own, if need be. She had, actually, with her father occasionally doing some odd job for some spare money. But here she couldn't do that, and that was the problem.

Shinobu was anything but reassured of their escape and return to the physical world after hearing Ranma and Nabiki had spoken to _highschoolers_.

In turn, Nabiki wondered what was wrong with her. Not only did she have a splitting headache and walking around was definitely difficult, but then she still had these weird thoughts of the other programs here - even the old man Dumont. No, she definitely did not want to do anything with him. And the way she misspoke to Ranma what was wrong with her - she would have to make sure none of the people who heard that were going to tell that to the rumourmongers. No, she did not want to hug her, not now, not ever! At this rate, she'd end up tearing her hair out in frustration.

Hopefully, Haruo and Eiko would know what to do with her. She would much rather place her faith in those two than the programs here, not only because Eiko worked for her, but also because the programs here couldn't even cope with Ranma's curse. And she was certain that even here in the digital world, the incomprehensible gravitated towards Ranma.

"Poro? They said they'd move us to diskettes, and you'd know what we oughta do?" Ranma's voice cut through Nabiki's ruminations.

Dumont, still on his seat, entered the discussion at this point. To him, it had become more and more likely that these were indeed Users, and helping them onward was only the right thing to do.

"You will need to go to the Write Buffer, from where you will be transferred to the diskette."

"What about the tightened security protocols in the direct memory access areas?" Poro interjected, recalling the notice they had found in an archive bin.

Dumont paused at this, and carefully deliberated this. The four escapees could hardly take on a squad of protocol guards at once, not with Nabiki as she was right now. Attacking even one was a risky proposition, unless the Users truly had great powers they could use in that situation. Masquerading was also a bad solution, since not even he could reproduce them proper access right sets to fool the security programs.

If they couldn't proceed with the guards at the memory area, then maybe they could divert the attention of the security elsewhere? Now that he remembered, the database concurrency control systems were near the Write Buffer...

"I will open a one-way stream portal for you to the database control area. That area is, obviously, critical for for the database, and a chaos there should make most of the security programs to solve the problem. I believe you can do that?"

Nabiki gave a forced grin at that. "With Ranko here, that'll be no problem at all."

* * *

At the Encom mainframe, Master Control Program was processing one particular conundrum.

_Assume is MCP is genderless. Ranma Saotome is male. Observed. Ranma Saotome is female. Observed. Therefore, Ranma Saotome is male and female. Contradiction - no one is both male and female; hence, assumption is wrong. Conclusion: MCP has gender. Newline._

And so the preprogrammed models, coupled with rigid mathematical logic, only broke MCP further.

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_**AN:** It's been almost a year and a half since I first uploaded chapter 4... and I think I write even worse than I did then. I will be **very** busy this spring with my schooling, which is why I cut this chapter earlier than I had originally planned._

_The English translation of "A History of Algorithms" by Jean-Luc Chabert et al. claimed that the 'ju' in 'ju-jitsu' comes from the Chinese 'shu' meaning "rule, process or stratagem" and with this in mind, 'ju-jitsu' could be interpreted as "procedural rules for suppleness" or "algorithms for suppleness." I failed to find corroborating evidence on the web, but decided to draw parallels with exercises and algorithms anyway._

_The keyboard Ukyo used should've probably used kanas, but I cut corners and let it use Latin characters instead._

_Don't read too much into Nabiki's behaviour and classify this as a RanmaNabiki pairing, at least for now. A lot of it is the virus talking._

_As for MCP's thought processes: bear in mind MCP was programmed with too strict assumptions. In his world, you can represent a person's gender with one bit._


	6. On the Run

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

Chapter 6: On the Run

* * *

The yellow glow from the stream portal quickly faded from Ranma's vision as she landed on the portal endpoint. Looking over the place where the portal Dumont had opened had taken them, her eyes widened at the sight. Granted, she had seen many unbelievable things here already, but only the Write Buffer tower was anything compared to this.

The construct was a huge complex of cylinder-shaped towers with bridges of light connecting them at various heights. Their luminosity varied, pulsating with no apparent rhythm, but as the pulses reached the destination tower, more circuitry patterns lit up on the side of the tower before fading back to the dark gray background.

And all this was atop of a base that, while more monolithic in appearance, was certainly no less intricately shaped. Indeed, most of the shapes Ranma and the other Users had seen before were not particularly detailed, most resembling only large building blocks with some edges clipped, and some comparatively simple circuit decorations on them. This complex, however, was no simple geometric shape, nor were the etchings possible to describe in as few words as usual. And it didn't take an expert in modern art to see this.

Although, she wasn't so sure she could call the glow patterns mere 'decorations.' She still didn't know what they were, but after seeing Dumont open the stream portal and the patterns light up right underneath it, she would've bet... well, a week's free lunches that they were connected. Especially since she didn't have to hide her bad poker face to win the bet.

Nabiki, now leaning on Ranma's shoulder, would've definitely agreed, if only the crippled User had been feeling any better. Instead, she kept her eyes closed and waited for the effects the portal had on her vision to disappear. Meanwhile, Ranma guided her to sit on a nearby slab.

Shinobu and Poro had stepped into the portal before the younger Users, and now stood some metres ahead of them, looking at the database system. At the base they saw a wide entrance in which a rapid stream of tugs vanished, and a somewhat smaller one from where tugs appeared before disappearing behind the archive stacks surrounding the database.

With Nabiki now sitting still, Ranma walked over to the other two escapees, casting a brief look a the huge corkscrew-like tower to her left. It was going to be a long, long walk up there again... but before that, they'd have to get to that stack of pipes and chimneys, or that's what the complex looked like to her.

"So that's where we're gunna go?"

"Indeed. I hope we can find out how to disrupt the system... I have not heard of any data being lost since the latest version was installed."

Seemingly mulling over something for a few microcycles, Shinobu turned to face Ranma and Nabiki, who now opened her eyes.

"Should Nabiki come in there in her condition at all?" she inquired, nodding her head at the Tendo.

An understanding dawning on her face, Ranma looked at Nabiki.

"Don't you even think about leaving me here," Nabiki snarled low, her gaze focusing on Ranma. "You will take me to the Write Buffer, got it? What was the martial artists' creed again?" she asked, then continuing with obvious distaste at her own words, "Defend the weak?"

Ranma's face tightened in a scowl. She wasn't planning on ditching Nabiki, but as a martial artist, she couldn't help but to balk at the thought of not going in that huge complex herself.

As if reading Ranma's thoughts, Shinobu interrupted her line before she even got started.

"She has a point. You're the... martial artist, right? So you'd be better off guarding her than us."

"Ranma, let's get going," Nabiki said, standing up, if only a bit wobbly. She turned towards Poro and Shinobu and cast a meaningful look at the latter. "We'll see you at the Buffer then."

"Don't worry about us - we'll make it out just fine," Shinobu assured. A hint of smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. "Just try to make it up there by the time we're done."

Ranma pivoted quickly towards Shinobu. "Challenge taken an' accepted."

* * *

Half a cycle after the team of fugitives had split, Ranma was taking a good look ahead of them. The Corkscrew Tower, as she had named the tower with the Write Buffer for the lack of any better name, looked far more intimidating from down here than up there.

Although the root of the tower with the Write Buffer was a few microcycles' straight walk from Ranma and Nabiki's current position, it didn't mean the path there was only a cakewalk, especially with protocol guards and recognizers moving around in abundance. Indeed, running out in the open was as good as running for the gallows - or rather, to the debugger and then the null device. Not that Ranma knew what debuggers or the null device were, but it was bad.

At least the structures that lined their way to the root of the tower provided them with enough nooks and crannies for them to hide in. Right now, they were once again sneaking in a low trench that was in some places lined with those nondescript crates they had been hiding behind. The crates were a poor mask if they had to stay still; they had to move in pace with the guards passing by to keep themselves hidden from the guards. But when the walkway they were following was either lined with a high wall or a deep chasm, they were much better than nothing.

Nabiki needed a breather to recover once every five microcycles, and it had been four microcycles already since their last break. A few more microcycles walk from their position, they could see a large bridge crossing over a chasm, and ending at the base of the Corkscrew Tower.

Ranma heard again the tell-tale sputtering of a recognizer tug, this time coming from behind them. She took a quick glance around them, in search for their next hiding place. The trench and the crates weren't enough of visual cover, since the recognizer had no problems seeing over them. And Ranma had certainly learned not to be so foolhardy to challenge a recognizer, a vehicle that could squash her in bits and pieces without any problems... if they only saw and caught up with her.

To their right: an open walkway and a deep chasm. To their left: wall. Going backwards or staying put wasn't an option either, and going up or down, those weren't going to help them even if they knew how to fly or burrow like moles... burrow. That gave Ranma a pause and made her briefly stop in her tracks.

Nabiki, who had now heard the sounds as well, was getting anxious herself as well, and Ranma's sudden stop surprised her.

"What are you waiting for, can't you hear the tug coming?"

Not replying, Ranma only punched the wall hard, channeling some Power into it. She didn't want to pass out, not without a Power source nearby. She could use only a limited amount of her reserves, but the training she had done on Power conservation and use on their way to the IO tower paid off.

Like when she had punched a boulder by the source pool, a piece of the wall now crumbled apart, revealing a cave several metres deep. She quickly took a hold of Nabiki and started pulling her towards the hole, when the older girl exclaimed, "Stop wasting the time, they'll notice the hole just as well they'd see us!" and started limping forward in the trench. If they hurried, they might manage to dodge the recognizer in the next intersection, which she hoped to be soon after the next turn on the walkway.

The next thing she noticed was herself losing both breath and footing as Ranma slung her over her shoulder and started sprinting towards the intersection.

It took only a moment for them to turn the corner to the left. To their distress, they only saw the road open before them for a long stretch, far longer than they'd manage to run before the recognizer would catch them.

Nabiki still hanging on her shoulders, Ranma took a deep breath to gather herself. She was the best martial artist around here, and she was going to keep things that way! She only had to run-slash-leap as fast as she did in the real world with ki-infused legs.

In an attempt to repeat that skill, she focused some of her remaining Power in her legs, making their glow brighter and brighter, but elsewhere on her body, the circuitry shapes darkened and lost their vividness.

Without another preamble, she launched herself and Nabiki towards the crossroads. The ground blurred beneath her as she ran as fast as she could, keeping Nabiki on her shoulders somewhat steady. Her vision grew dim at the borders as she focused the Power she had on her legs.

As one fourth of the distance lay behind them, the ground shook, making Ranma nearly trip over. To her and Nabiki's luck, she regained her footing instinctively, but slowed down to look for the cause of the tremors.

Nabiki gaped at the top of the recognizer tug now visible over the top of the wall. Then Ranma turned around to look at it herself, spinning Nabiki around and making her lose her sight of the tug.

"What's it doing?"

It sounded like the engines - or whatever was the force driving the recognizer - had died down, and the bracket-like hooks under the tug had turned around and moved right underneath, making the tug now look like a giant standing on one leg. Leg that was placed at...

"It must've blocked the hole you blew in the wall," Nabiki noted, now that she had struggled herself down from Ranma's shoulder. She couldn't believe what luck they had. If Ranma hadn't blown the hole without thinking, the recognizer would've seen them by now. If she hadn't dragged Ranma onward, they'd be nicely holed up in the cave.

Ranma merely scratched the back of her head sheepishly. The unsaid compliment was the best she could've expected to get from Nabiki back in Tokyo, or even more than she could ever expect to get. In a random offshoot of a thought she wondered if whatever disease Nabiki had was making her act this strange.

Before she could think about this any more, Nabiki broke in with her comment. They had to find a place to take a breather and get away from the open area by the time the tug moved on, or guards came to check just what the recognizer had found.

Ranma picked up Nabiki again and began running towards the intersection. There she could see a pile of crates that weren't piled in straight lines, but leaving a clear path for climbing up halfway to the top, from there on to a ledge, and finally to a cavity well above the street level. It was well out of sight from the passing guards, and the crates would also shield the two fugitives from the sharp sensors recognizer tugs had.

The only small problem was in getting also Nabiki up there, but they both managed to get up to the ledge easily enough.

Both of them leaned against the wall, relaxing while knowing they couldn't be spotted from the walkway. Not only did Nabiki need to catch her breath, but Ranma welcomed the chance to recuperate as well. Not that she showed it, though, but the Power she had expended was very slow in returning.

They sat there in comfortable silence, until Nabiki had started feeling a bit better. She rolled over to her side and turned her head to Ranma.

"What's gotten to you, Saotome?"

"Whaddya mean? Ain't got nothing wrong with me!"

"Please, haven't you learned already you can't fool me even now? You've been in your girl form for a day now, haven't seen any way to turn back, and you're not in any kind of panic?" Nabiki sniffed, then continued in a fake soprano, "Aaah, I can't be a girl, I'm the man amongst men!"

Ranma fixed an annoyed glare at the older teen.

"Now, I ain't a book smart, but I know 'bout doing the important stuff first, ya know?"

"Could've fooled me," Nabiki thought to herself.

"And right now, we gotta get outta here."

"I ask again, what's gotten to you? Where's the macho bravado you only briefly flashed at the IO tower?"

Ranma moved his free hand to cup her breast and gave it a solid squeeze. "See these?"

"Haven't stopped you before, have they?"

With Nabiki not buying the excuse, Ranma only grumbled to herself and slightly shifted on her place. "It's not your problem, Nabiki."

"The hell it isn't. We're both stuck here, and that makes it my business."

A muted humming sound cut their discussion short and made them crawl over to the ledge and look down at the walkway. There, two black and red gleaming tanks made their way towards the still stationary recognizer, followed by a small squad of protocol guards. Both Users briefly thanked their luck that they hadn't stayed in the cave.

"We should get back on the road soon... they might comb through the neighbourhood thoroughly now that they've seen a sign of us," Nabiki muttered, attempting to remove the thoughts of physically attacking the guards walking down below. She didn't know why she was getting these odd impulses, but she didn't like it. At least she hadn't had such thoughts of Ranma after they left the IO tower. That would've made things awkward.

Banishing such thoughts from her mind, she looked at the horizon where the silhouette of the database system was visible. The ramp leading up to the Write Buffer didn't give them any hiding places, so they'd have to wait until all the system maintenance programs had left the tower, or prepare to fight them off. And fighting them off was out of the question. Although she had seen Ranma practice around with the disc she carried on her back, what kind of weapon would a frisbee make? All they could do for now was to wait for Shinobu and Poro create the diversion at the database.

She hated her situation from the bottom of her heart. Not only was she involuntarily and totally dependant on someone else accomplishing something, but she also felt she was losing control of something that had defined her for years now: her own mind.

For what could have possibly been more terrifying for the person whose guile and wits had kept her out of the rampaging martial artists' way?

* * *

Meanwhile, Shinobu and Poro had found their way to the main entrance of the database management system. First broad and wide, it narrowed to a point of having room for only one program to pass at a time... after taking a queue number.

For the tenth time in five cycles, Shinobu watched the ticket she held in her hand. "3,110,675," it read. "3,110,437," read a huge holographic display hanging from the ceiling of the waiting lobby. She couldn't slump down any further; she had done so far too many times by now.

"Does it always take _this_ long waiting?"

"Yes. Requesting anything from the database demands a strict adherence to the protocol."

Frustrated, Shinobu stood up and began pacing around the lobby. "3,110,440," the display read now. It would be quite a while before their turn came up and they could go in through the gates before them. The lobby was full of different sorts of programs; some were purple, some were yellow, but none were red, the color Shinobu had already learned to associate with the system guards.

Then there were the gates. The entrance deeper into the database was a set of gates with revolving doors, obscuring whatever was behind them from sight.

And on the other side of the room, the open holes in the wall showed the ramp leading to the lobby. The database apparently was an important place here, considering the number of programs continuously entering the system. And constantly busy, too; a display next to the "now serving"-number told the number of programs currently inside the system... fifty-six at the moment.

As her habit was, she started looking for patterns around her. In Tokyo, this meant the way road pavement was laid, ceiling tiles, flower plantations, and so on. Every time a program stepped through the doors, they went in alone, even if there would've been just enough room for two to enter simultaneously.

And every time the doors closed, the counter telling the number of programs inside increased by one. Every now and then, at a seemingly random pace, the counter decreased as the programs apparently exited from the system to some other space than the lobby, keeping the number constantly just under sixty.

She looked again out through the window frame. To her distress, she saw a squad of five red-glowing programs heading their way, all probably in attempt to find the escapees. Not minding to use her elbows, she quickly made her way to the yawning stream editor.

"Get up, the guards are coming!" she hissed at Poro's left ear. That made the lethargic program stand up quickly, although Shinobu pulling on his arm definitely helped.

She dragged him from the arm, weaving between the programs that blocked their way to the revolving doors.

The entrance doors opened to let in five guards. A sharp rap of one shock staff on the floor was all it took to part the mass of programs standing in the middle of the lobby, revealing Shinobu and Poro almost at the doors.

"Suspend, conscripts!" the lead program ordered.

Ignoring the order, Shinobu forcibly pushed Poro into the next opening in the door and jumped herself in the same slot. It was a tight fit, but like water wheels, the door pushed them forward and onto the other side of the wall. Unseen to them, the holographic counter increased by one to fifty-seven.

"Stop executing the escape routine!" the guard programs shouted in the lobby.

As soon as Shinobu and Poro reached the other side and couldn't support themselves against the wall any longer, they hit the ground with a thump, Shinobu on top of Poro. She quickly rolled off of him and stood up, fearing the guards to come through the doors right after them.

A quick survey around them showed few places to hide. The inside of the database was riddled with translucent bridges in multiple levels crossing over large stacks of crates lying below ground level. At least the bridges had railings, as they certainly weren't wide. And wherever the bridges intersected, there were red and green traffic lights floating in mid-air.

Still, no matter where they were on the bridges, the guards could easily see them from the entrance point. And the only way forward was through the bridges.

"Get up!" she shouted, and started running towards the bridges, Poro following on her heels a moment later.

She picked at random a bridge, and by the time the first guard program got through the doors, they had already passed three intersections completely ignoring the traffic lights.

"Suspend those programs!" the lead guard ordered. The escapees were already so deep in the network of bridges that they could not directly see which way they should have gone. But there were five of them, so he ordered the other four to go after the conscripts on the bridge, while he himself would find the way to the exit and block it from unlawful programs.

Meanwhile, Shinobu and Poro had ended up in a queue of programs waiting for the light to turn green. A quick glance behind them was enough to make Shinobu push the programs before her down almost like domino blocks.

Stepping over the prone programs, Poro asked, "Where are we going?"

"Away from those guards!" she replied, waving a hand around her. The said guards had already managed to get so far off from the doors that they almost appeared to be all around them in the web-like set of bridges.

Running away from the red lights, she and Poro crashed in the next intersection into another program, who fell down on his back. Shaking the cobwebs from his head, he stood up and wondered which direction was he going anyway before picking one direction by chance.

He ended up going a way no program was supposed to go to from that intersection, not in this version of the database system.

Shinobu cursed. They had to find a way out of here! To her great frustration, the bridge network was so complex and full of twists and turns so that planning her movements ahead of time would've needed her to stand still to see exactly where she could and couldn't move. Standing still at the moment, though, was a bad idea, unless the guards had been moving to some central coordinated plan. That didn't appear to be the case, though, as the guards appeared to wander around the bridge network, not finding a good path to the runaways.

Still, when she was running in straight lines towards the next intersection, she couldn't help but to curse that she was in worse physical shape as the martial artist of the group, or that uppity girl. She was already getting tired, and if they stopped, the guards would certainly zero in on them. Even if she hadn't seen the effects of programs derezzing at the game grid - except for the disco dancer - the frog monster she had had to fight against on the game grid was one thing she didn't wish to face again. And that was assuming she'd be sent back to the game grid in the first place; she wasn't too keen on finding out the interrogation methods and other sentences this world provided.

No, this was not the time to think of those things, not as long as she had the exit to find. It wasn't to the top, since there weren't any exits there, just a number of crates and terminals. She couldn't see any on their level either, but the four guards were getting around her.

Shinobu did a double-take. Four guards? Weren't there five that she saw coming to the database? If these were four, then where was the fifth?

Her eyes scanned the whole hall. She couldn't see her at the bottom, near the stacks, but that didn't mean he wasn't there. He wasn't to the top, but... there he was, near the entrance doors but the door he was in front of wasn't a revolving door. And she was certain that all the doors from the lobby to here were revolving ones; she had spent a good while looking at them while waiting for their turn to enter the system.

And if the door wasn't an entrance, then it had to be an exit.

She looked a bit to the side, seeing nearby a large amount of programs stuck on a particularly long bridge. At the end of the bridge was an intersection, and the one program that appeared to be coming to the intersection from another direction appeared to be the same as the one she had pushed over some time ago. And now they were stuck on a bridge directly above the platform that had the exit doorway.

"If this qualified for the problem as the database, I'd want to benefit from it, too!" she thought to herself.

Poro, who had dutifully been following Shinobu as she raced the bridges over and over, took a speculative peek at the bridge. He doubted the bridge had been built for the load of that many programs. If the bridge collapsed, he'd feel responsible for the derezzing of the programs now on the bridge, because he hadn't warned them. The question wasn't that easy, though. If they didn't cause this disruption in the services, he'd be caught by the protocol guards again, and unlike Shinobu, he could understand what else the Kernel might do to them if they were caught. _That_ was far from something as pleasant as the assignation to the game grids as a pedestrian inbetween fast-moving cars.

He only hoped the bridge wouldn't collapse, and that they'd find their way out of the hall without getting caught.

The hope was all in vain, though, as the bridge creaked under the excess load and with a loud screech broke, one end crashing down onto the platform level. The other end, however was left hanging up like a hinge.

The programs, kept from falling off the bridge due to the guardrails, tumbled down along the fallen bridge. The protocol guard, caught off-guard by the collapsing bridge, ended up buried under the dozens of programs.

As the movement on the bridge came to halt, the loudspeakers that had been quiet until now came to life. "Database integrity compromised," the speakers repeated while a translucent barrier appeared atop the record stacks at the hall bottom.

"Poro, can you see a way down there?" Shinobu shouted to Poro, a smile attempting to break through on her face. Things were going their way after all!

"Left in the next intersection, then right, then down the bridge!" he replied, attempting to overpower the loudspeaker's blaring, not masking either his relief of the programs not falling down to the bottom of the hall or guilt of having them hurt.

The guards still circling around the bridges were making their way towards the collapsed gangway as well. But in spite of their best attempts, they were still a good distance away from the two escapees as they ran down the ramp, holding on to the guard railings to secure their steps.

They gingerly stepped around the pile of programs at the bottom, and immediately ran to the exit where they hitched a ride on a tug out of the complex. From their ride they could see the spike of the Write Buffer tower.

Soon after them, the four guards reached the bottom of the wrecked bridge as well. Three of them went to pull the squad leader from underneath all the rubble and programs, while the fourth ran to the security rezzing station to call for backup in cleaning the mess.

* * *

_MCP has gender. Proven. Corollary: MCP is male or female. Newline._

* * *

Ranma and Nabiki were still hiding on their perch when they noticed the traffic down on the road get much higher as security guards ran down the Corkscrew Tower ramp towards the database complex.

"Do ya think they're done now?" Ranma asked from Nabiki.

"In any case, this appears to be our chance, " she replied, stretching her arms wide. A good rest had done wonders to her, but she still felt awful... only not as awful as before. They'd still need to take breaks on the trip to the top if she was to walk up there on her own feet, but Ranma would probably be able to carry her if the need arose. Turning her thoughts away from the trip ahead, she settled to watch the flow of protocol guards and whatnot coming down from the tower.

It wasn't until a good while later that the last guard they had seen had vacated the ramp circling around the tower. They carefully slipped down the crates back to the ground level, and began making their way towards the Write Buffer.

Some microcycles into their journey, Nabiki stole a glance or two at Ranma. Whether she liked to admit it or not, she wouldn't have survived this long without Ranma helping. Not that her survival prospects looked good without a small sort of miracle right now, but she would have derezzed already at the game grid.

Many would question if Nabiki had any honor in her actions. Even more people would say opportunism was Nabiki's middle name. She often bent and twisted the topic so that the question of her owing anyone anything became unclear. But sometimes even she could not do that.

She hated to owe people anything. She did not like one bit that she owed Ranma "brawn-for-brains" Saotome her life. But no matter how she attempted to tell herself it was not so, she could not.

"Ranma."

"Huh?"

"Thank you."

And this time, she meant it.

Nabiki's acknowledgment of Ranma's help brought forth silence the two had walked in for a good while. It was been a novel - and awkward - situation for both, so neither really knew how to continue talking from there on.

"No." A synthetic voice broke the silence behind them.

"Yes," echoed another, very similar voice.

Ranma and Nabiki quickly turned around to see... two floating polyhedrons with a glowing afterimage showing their path.

"No-no."

"Yes-yes-yes."

Then, after a brief pause, "Yes."

The two objects began moving towards Ranma and Nabiki, who had now began running away from the two bickering blobs. They were better off not taking the chance of them being in league with the system guards.

Their attempt to outrun the mysterious chatterboxes ended in a few microcycles, when Nabiki couldn't keep up the pace any longer and fell down on the ground. Ranma quickly stopped and moved herself between the prone User and the two floating near-spheres.

"Whatcha want? Are ya with the guard programs?"

"No."

"So what are you?" she asked, tapped the ground with her foot a couple of times, but got no reply.

"Can't ya say nuthin' but yes and no?"

"No."

"Great, a pair of sumthing that can't say things straight - or nothing but straight - or... argggh!" Ranma muttered to herself. The quiet snickering from Nabiki told her that she hadn't gone unheard, and she spared only a brief glare at the girl now getting up from the ground.

"Whaddya think, what should we do with 'em?"

Now upright, Nabiki turned to the two unidentified flying objects.

"Will you cause trouble for us?"

"No-no-no."

"Can you show us the shortest path to the Write Buffer then?"

"Yes," the objects said, rapidly moving up and down as if nodding, and then began moving along the ramp.

* * *

Meanwhile, Shinobu and Poro had already jumped off the tug and were on their way towards the tower as well. The former was feeling very good about herself, although the way they had made the system crash down left her a bit unsatisfied. She wasn't even certain what and how they had accomplished their task, and that's what miffed her. Lady Luck was a fickle mistress.

"Something wrong?" Poro asked Shinobu, whose expression seemed to constantly change from annoyed to frustrated and back again.

She only let out a long-suffering sigh and picked up the pace. The sooner they got out of here, the better. This wasn't just her desire to simply kick back and relax for a while, but she also missed her husband a great deal. The problem wasn't him, though; it was the in-laws.

That she couldn't be there for the dinner with them was certain to make their relations tenser, as if they weren't difficult enough before. When she told them she was not going to stay home and manage the household but go to work herself, they didn't have to say out loud that they were surprised and disappointed. At least her dear husband understood. He'd better, since doing postgraduate studies at the university wasn't a good source of income. And with the falling out with his parents, the money she got as a secretary was even more welcome.

It was her job as a secretary that she considered one of the better aspects of being employed in a Western company. Some of the women she had went to school with had been hired as office ladies, but were practically asked to leave their job once they got married.

While her chances of moving higher on her career at Encom Japan were low, at least they hadn't expected her to quit her job. Hopefully they wouldn't fire her for these missed days, either.

Her thoughts briefly wandered to the two teenagers. "They should be near the Write Buffer by now... if they are still alive." She had stomped down her nagging conscience, but she refused to take the risk of getting the same disease as them, whatever it was. But it helped enough to tell herself that at least one of them had to stay fine, especially if the boy had the same bug already.

She remembered the walk up the ramp was a long one, and last time she had walked the distance it had been all downhill. Going up there should definitely pass for aerobic exercise, she thought. "Better not stop to wonder about it," she thought, and continued onward.

* * *

Nabiki sat down on a slab and chuckled mirthlessly as she looked over to the two blobs now floating just over Ranma's shoulders. True enough, their 'guides' had shown the shortest path to the Write Buffer, but without Ranma carrying her, climbing up the stacks of those mysterious, ever-present floating crates would've been beyond her current capabilities.

Ranma was again practicing new tricks with Power, now attempting to replicate the fancy patterns she had seen below the stream portal at the IO tower. She set her palm on the ground, and channeled some Power into it.

As she saw the emerging patterns and a small, fluctuating yellow sphere above the ground, she yelled, "Yeah!" while the two objects both traced a victory flag above her shoulders with their trails. At least they couldn't make them wave.

"Ya know, we could try to already enter the Buffer?" Ranma asked.

"No, we're better off waiting for Shinobu and Poro; besides, when Shinobu and I were... moved here, the loudspeakers," Nabiki waved around her, as she couldn't exactly tell _where_ the speakers were, "told us when we were supposed to step in. And if you go in there by yourself, you're on your own then."

"Fine, fine," Ranma replied and rubbed her arm a bit. It had began to ache a bit, probably due to the training she had been doing.

"Don't ya think they should've been here already?"

Nabiki rubbed her forehead and felt a migraine forming up. She doubted it was due to Ranma acting like an impatient child, but it wasn't helping in the least.

"Even if we ignored that the database is a good distance away from here, we took a shortcut here, something they probably wouldn't know about. So no, they aren't late yet." Truth be told, she was getting a bit anxious of staying up here much longer; the longer they stayed there, the more likely it was for the guard programs to return and apprehend them.

Begrudgingly, Ranma turned away to continue practicing while Nabiki looked at the slope leading back down from the top of the 'Corkscrew tower'. "Can't say it isn't an apt name," she thought.

In a few microcycles, the loudspeakers broke the silence. "Prepare for the transfer of data files and code archives."

"Ya hear that, 'Biki?"

"Yes, and it's Nabiki!"

* * *

In the physical world, things were starting to move forward. Haruo and Eiko had looked around the system files and attempted to pick a reasonable selection of files they might be interested at home, especially source code for _Space Paranoids_.

"Ukyo, insert the first diskette now!" Haruo called. A few seconds later, they heard the reply.

"It doesn't fit in!"

"Eiko, why don't you go there?"

With a sigh, she stood up and went to the back room.

* * *

Back at the Write Buffer, Ranma and Nabiki watched as a stream of ubiquitous crates moved to the Buffer portal before vanishing.

"Ya think that's Ukyo?"

Nabiki merely nodded. "We should hope so..." she thought to herself.

At that time, the two database wreckers turned a corner and saw the other Users watching as the crates floated by. Already at a distance, Shinobu could tell that Ranma's colour had taken a step in the same direction as Nabiki's. She double-checked her own colour and sighed, relieved. It was still the same pure blue.

"Hello, Users," Poro greeted Ranma and Nabiki, who turned around to see the new arrivals.

As Nabiki saw the uninfected User and program, new thoughts filled her mind. "Hug him! Hug her!" echoed in her mind. As if in pain, she slapped her hands over her ears and turned away, hunched over. Great, now she was hearing voices, too!

Ranma's reaction was a bit different. "No, stop checking Shinobu out! Ya already got too many fiancées!" she thought. To avoid these thoughts, she redirected her gaze to Poro. "No no no, I do not like men!"

Shinobu took a step back from the two sickly Users; they appeared worse than she had expected.

"Programs and , enter the Write Buffer now," the loudspeakers announced. Ranma pulled on Nabiki's hand, both of which were still on her ears, and told her, "Let's go, it's our turn."

With the voices in her mind now almost silent, Nabiki let Ranma guide her by hand to the portal. "I really hope Haruo and Eiko know what they're doing," she thought as she stepped into the portal plate.

Poro and Shinobu watched as Ranma followed Nabiki, vanishing in a golden flash.

"There's something wrong with her, too?" Poro asked.

Before Shinobu could answer, the two polyhedrons appeared before their faces and said "Yes."

"Gahh! What on Earth is that?" Shinobu exclaimed, startled. They hadn't met many friendly faces in here, and if it moved and didn't have a face, even then it was probably a tank, a recognizer or something else decisively unfriendly.

"Bits?" Poro stated more than asked.

"What did you say?"

"They're bits, aren't you?"

"Yes," one of the now identified bits answered.

"They don't appear to be verbally gifted," Shinobu commented.

"That's right... they can have only two states, 'yes' and 'no', so that is quite a limitation."

The loudspeakers interrupted their discussion. "Programs Poro and , please enter the Write Buffer immediately."

"You go first; I'll be right after you," Poro told Shinobu, who had already turned and began walking towards the portal. "Hopefully I won't be in any close contact with those two," she thought. She guessed whatever they had had to be infectious.

As Shinobu vanished in a flash, Poro walked to a nearby message crate and set his hands on it. "It's good to be a stream editor," he thought, as he wrote a message to whoever would read the diskette. When he was finished, he pushed the crate into the portal and stepped in himself a moment later.

* * *

Eiko ejected the last of the diskettes from the drive. They now had copied all the people inside - without forgetting some extra compensation for their efforts. She gave Ukyo a smile.

"We're about done here, then."

"And you'll help Ranchan back here, won't you?"

Eiko replied confidently, "At least we'll give it our best shot." In her mind, she amended, "Not that I have any clue where to start. But that's better left unsaid."

A few minutes later, the broken game console was again in the same condition it was when they entered and the window they entered through closed.

Not much later, a katana cut the window latch open, and in climbed a dark-clad high school student.

"Verily, the dark depths noble men must delve in order to free the innocent from the vile evil that plagues us."

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_Extra: Substitutes_

In the dark of the night, one particular purple-headed girl was breaking into the Encom arcade. This time, Shampoo wasn't armed with her usual melon maces, or at least they were nowhere visible. Instead, she carried a book; a book whose cover said, "Computer Programming for Amazons." Granted, the last word was hastily scribbled next to an crossed-out word that eerily resembled "Dummies."

A good question is to ask why she did that... when you're an expert tracker and have a bit of extra time and a whole lot of desire to admire your legally wed hubby, very little is impossible. Even finding out where he - or she, as it was at the time - disappeared and how.

Two hours later, Shampoo returned to her room at the Cat Caf. And there was much rejoicing as she hugged her beloved maces, all the while thinking how much she missed them. At this point, it is prudent to point out the couple of microcomputers brutally smashed into pieces, usually with the said maces, in the trash bin.

"Computer programming isn't that difficult; no different from writing down a new noodle recipe," Shampoo mused to herself.

Some hours later, as the morning batch jobs executed far above the sparse matrix clouds in the arcade mainframe, the four fugitives continued on their way. Their progress to the IO tower was halted by the appearance of an apparently female program with long dark hair, held up in two large round hairclips.

"Nihao, shi jie!" the program exclaimed, before glomping onto girl-Ranma's frame. "Nihao, shi jie!"

"Shampoo? Whatcha doin' here?" Ranma asked, as she tried to extract the clingy program off her person.

"Nihao, shi jie!"

"It's not Shampoo, Ranma..." Nabiki said, although she wondered just why did a random program have Shampoo's face and why did she give the constrictor-snake-strength hug to Ranma. Was there a connection to Shampoo?

"Nihao, shi jie?"

Poro nodded sagely. "Yes... and apparently suffers of helloworlditis. They're programs whose function is repeating the same line over and over again in an infinite loop... as would happen to be the case now."

"Nihao, shi jie? Nihao, shi jie!"

Far off in another realm and time, the whole Pokemon population looked up, having the feeling of someone talking about them.

* * *

_**AN:** The joys of classical (dumbed-down) sentential calculus with a contradictory theory. Well, at least these "reasonings" are simple._

_I gave up on writing 9kw chapters; instead, I'll settle with updates over 5kw. Oh, and I have no idea how badly wrong "Nihao, shi jie" is; I wanted to say 'Hello world'._

_Natalie-E-G raised a very good point about the virus in this story in a review for chapter 5. I'm well past the point of no return with anachronisms, and I don't plan on introducing _Ghost in the Shell_ into the picture... yet._

_Things I didn't like in this chapter: No frisbee tricks. No upcoming Ukyo vs Kuno. Poor virus characterization. No Oikake, Machibuse, Kimagure or Otoboke... as much as I wanted to give the four guard programs names and have them act according to them._

_Thanks to Ozzallos and weebee for giving feedback on this chapter._


	7. Disassembly

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's property; the former originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

The curtain blocked the rays of early Thursday morning sun, keeping the room dark. Within that room Haruo slept like a log. All good things must come to an end, though, as the noise of clinking plates and cups from the kitchen roused him.

With a grumble, he rolled over on his futon to keep the annoying noise out of his ears. He was tired, damnit!

Not long after, Haruo tossed aside his covers with a frustrated grunt. No use trying to catch any more sleep, especially since he now remembered what he had done last night... and the great puzzle he was about to tackle. Hopefully it'd be more difficult than getting in the Encom arcade mainframe... just remembering it made him depressed.

Oh well - breakfast first before school, after that to wait for Eiko to come by and look at what the diskettes in his drawer held. Right now, though, food was just distraction for him. Sure, it was something of a necessity, but nothing to spend thinking about more than the absolute minimum. Food in, energy out.

With that in his mind, he quickly left his room to wash up, have breakfast and copious amounts of tea. He'd probably spend a good part of the school day sleeping, but that couldn't be helped right now. The caffeinated beverages in his school bag might help a bit, but probably not enough.

* * *

In the commercial district, one disgruntled man trudged through the streets. His goal: Encom Arcade. His task: To open up the arcade, although he didn't really know why it should be opened this early when most kids were in school.

As he walked in to turn on the lights, he heard a peculiar sound, emanating from the middle of the arcade.

"Is that... snoring?"

Quietly, he sneaked to look at the source of the noise. And behold; next to a number of wrecked machines, slept a teen dressed in black.

"Mmmh... fierce tigress..."

Just as quietly, he left to call the police, followed immediately afterwards by a call to his boss's home phone number.

* * *

"No sleeping in class!"

_Thwack!_

The chalk that struck Ukyo's head woke her up from her woefully short nap. It wasn't that she wanted to miss the lesson but more like she couldn't stay awake. With only a few hours' sleep last night, she was little better than a sleepwalker.

She just wished that she could deflect attacks while asleep, like Ranchan did. Maybe she'd have to start keeping a spatula in her hands? Actually, it sounded like she'd better do it right now. She'd just better watch not to cut herself or tear her clothes.

Her eyes drifted closed again. If only it would've been Sunday already...

_Thwack!_

"Hnnggh...?" Ukyo blearily opened her eyes, not noticing how her grasp on the spatula loosened.

_Clang!_

"Miss Kuonji, bucket duty, now!"

Apparently she didn't have enough practice to block the projectiles when asleep. And the sound of the spatula falling on the floor definitely would've waken her up even without the chalk. Or maybe she wasn't sleeping deep enough.

Yawning, she set up the buckets and started doing small physical exercises with them.

In front of a door down the hall, Haruo took a look at the crazy martial artist before he lifted his own buckets. All the caffeine he had with him hadn't been enough to keep him awake. The most visible effect was that he had to go to the toilet already twice this morning; the dehydrating effect of caffeine certainly showed through.

By contrast, Eiko had gotten her parents to call her in sick.

"Lucky girl," he thought.

* * *

As the lunch break came by, Ukyo's friends Misa and Toshiko intercepted her before she could leave the classroom. It was Misa who started the cross examination.

"What's wrong, Ukyo?"

"Yeah, you've never been this tired before."

Ukyo had to blink once before the words processed past the veil of sleepiness.

"I couldn't sleep very well last night ," she attempted to lie.

"And what do Ranma and the computer club have to do with it?" Misa asked.

"Nothing! Where'd you get that idea?"

"Because Haruo was also caught sleeping during lessons and Eiko simply wasn't at school today." Misa replied.

"You spoke with the bishonen club members from their class?" Toshiko asked her, already knowing the answer.

"Of course! After yesterday's episode of _Bishonen Basket_, I had to go and talk with Arisa how absolutely _dreamy_ Akito was!"

"Right," Toshiko bluntly stated before focusing again on Ukyo. "And you did meet with them yesterday."

Being as tired as she was, Ukyo was not in the mood to play twenty questions about what she did yesterday, in particular because she had a hunch it was best to be quiet about it. While the police usually didn't get involved in martial arts fights, breaking and entering was likely to be a different case. This much she had figured yesterday; today, her thoughts were swimming around in molasses.

"Look, I'm dead tired right now, and all I want is to get over the rest of the school day and take a nap," she snapped.

Misa looked taken aback, but Toshiko was hardly fazed. Let the sleeping dogs lie, they said, and it apparently applied also to tired okonomiyaki chefs. But tomorrow, after Ukyo had managed to get enough sleep, they would get the whole story out of her.

Even if Toshiko wasn't a hard-core gossip monger, she'd still enjoy all the fun this latest twist in the ongoing saga of love, hate and jealousy was providing her with.

Then she shook her head in dismay. Maybe she had already spent too much time around Misa.

Not long after that, Akane returned to the class. She had been looking for Eiko to ask for more information on Ranma, since she apparently knew something. Unfortunately, she hadn't been to school that day.

* * *

For a nightshift worker like Tooru, the days were the best time to go to the arcade. No kids hogging the games, and even worse, their shouts distracting him from his attempts at beating the top scores.

Unfortunately, today he couldn't enter the arcade as early as usual, because the police had closed it for most of the morning. And when they had finally opened the doors, the Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial games he wanted to play were quite visibly broken.

Well, at least there were Tokyo Kaiju Rumble and Space Paranoids left.

After starting the twentieth level of the former, he couldn't help but to notice something different going on. Sure, the 200-foot tall school girl certainly would've qualified as something strange, but it might have been just an easter egg for all he knew.

But it stopped being funny when the girl whipped out a microphone, started singing music from the 70s and the sun turned into a huge disco ball. To top that, the buildings began swaying to the beat, along with the city defenders who jumped atop the buildings and started dancing to the music.

Forgetting about the yen he'd inserted, he let the dance routine continue - now the mechas were doing Irish step dancing - and walked over to the Space Paranoids booth. There was only so much he could stand, and this was way over the top. Of course it hurt that he had to abandon an hour's worth of playing by switching the game, but that must've been some odd glitch.

He stretched his fingers - he was in for a long session if he wanted to get the top score - and inserted the coin.

He started to get angry after the thirty-second level. Why was the tank shooting leeks at those flying okonomiyaki? What on Earth was happening in here?

Noticing the arcade manager's room had lights on, he went in and joined the group of others who were complaining of the similar bleed-over of characters between games. The man playing the only remaining Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial game complained of a tank rolling over the park and squishing the girl he had been wooing for a good while. The discs in Discs of Doom changed into onion rings flying in the air and smacking mobsters in the face.

The arcade manager was nervous, and the reason for this was the already present stack of complaints on his desk, each and every one describing how the games malfunctioned.

"Please, we will address this issue as soon as possible. Here, have these free game tokens to use once we get the problem corrected."

Slowly and only barely appeased, the mob left the office, still grumbling about the time lost playing the games.

The manager picked up his desk phone and dialed a number. A few rings later his call was answered.

"Encom Labs, technical support division. How may we help you?"

* * *

"So, who are you going to send to check on the arcade?" a junior technician asked his boss.

The boss leaned forward on his desk and pressed a button on his intercom. "Maseo, get in my office."

After a few seconds of silence, he turned back to the technician. "You're not allergic to cats, are you?"

"Actually,..." was all the techie got out before Maseo walked in through the door.

"Yes, boss?"

"Ah... ahh... achoo!"

Sometimes, it was an inconvenience to have an employee who valued the company of his cats more than that of humans and smelled like it. Hopefully he'd at least appreciate this temporary 'Get Out of Cubicleville Free' -card he was now presented with.

* * *

An hour after school was out, Eiko came to Haruo's house with a pack of caffeinated soft drinks that were quickly put in the fridge to cool. She showed no sign of being tired, unlike Haruo, who yawned once every few minutes. Soon, they made their way to Haruo's room where he had his computer and display all set up.

He was lucky, he supposed, to have found the small monochromatic TV for such a cheap price; with that, he didn't have to hoard the family room TV for his computer, especially when he had true inspiration to work non-stop. His parents didn't really know what he was doing with the computer, and he wanted to keep it that way. They hardly would've been happy with him trying to find his way into certain corporate mainframe computers.

Getting into those computers was an exercise in little beyond social engineering. Their current task, however, definitely had everything to do with the technical aspect, or that was the preconception they had got.

Haruo put the first diskette inside the external drive beside his microcomputer and typed in a command to see what it contained.

"So that's Ranma there? He's smaller than I thought," Eiko blithely commented.

"With Ranma's luck, that's probably 'she'..."

"Oh, right."

Haruo typed in the command to load and execute Ranma's code. As the program loaded, the screen flashed a few times before it turned black with a blinking cursor. Trying the easiest way first, he began typing in a greeting to Ranma.

* * *

Like when she was loaded into the arcade mainframe, Ranma's vision faded back, only more slow this time. The next thing she noticed was the very different look of the system she was now in. The etchings on the walls were much cruder, and only rarely went even diagonally. It felt much... blockier, she thought, than the earlier systems she had been in.

Looking around, she noticed that the exit from the IO buffer had less detail than the earlier doorways she'd seen. Taking these things in stride, she began walking towards the door.

To her surprise, already after the first three steps she felt out of breath. She knew she was feeling a bit under the weather when she left the previous system, but nothing this bad. As she forced herself to continue, she felt herself getting dizzy to the point of nearly passing out. Passing out - she wasn't going to call it fainting - was probably a bad idea, and she'd have to find a secure place just in case the protocol guards were out looking for her also here, wherever Haruo had moved them. Hopefully it was Haruo and not someone else, in any case.

* * *

Haruo cursed as his computer seemed to lock up for a while, not accepting further key presses. Annoyed, he watched as the cursor stopped moving. After a little while, the cursor resumed its activity and the backlog of characters Haruo had typed appeared on the screen.

* * *

After regaining her breath, Ranma managed to get outside the room. If the entrance hall had been bare, everything outside was even more so. And cramped. Everything in the system seemed to be stuffed together and almost as tightly as possible. There were just a handful of buildings surrounding one courtyard. All of this was surrounded by an enclosing wall that blotted out most of the sky.

She could see only one other program, who was sitting on a slab in the middle of the courtyard and shackled to the floor by his feet. When he noticed Ranma approaching him, he smiled enthusiastically.

"Greetings, program! I am Baromu, the basic interpreter around here. Do you have any program code you wish me to interpret?"

"Ranma Saotome. And no, -" she started before the loudspeakers interrupted her as they came to life.

"Ranma, can you hear me?"

Unlike before, she didn't feel any pull towards the buildings surrounding her. Without the handy homing signal telling where she could reply to Haruo's voice, she only looked around her, making sure she didn't see any guards around, and called back.

"Yes, where am I?"

"You're on my microcomputer. How are you feeling?"

Ranma wasn't going to admit she had almost fai- passed out, she meant, so she replied "Dizzy - and it's cramped in here!"

"Sorry, but this system doesn't have nearly as many memory as the Encom mainframe. That's probably why you feel like that."

"Any suggestions how to get you to the Encom mainframe?"

"Ask Shinobu 'bout that, but can't ya do sumthing about Nabiki bein' sick first?"

There was a long pause Ranma didn't like as Haruo and Eiko had a small debate on what their options were. If she didn't bring Nabiki back safe and sound, he would be able to count on two things: first Tendo demon head and waterworks, and second one angry tomboy. Kasumi's heart would probably be broken if something bad happened to Nabiki, and Ranma was not going to let the hand that fed her get bitten by anyone, let alone her.

Besides, even if she was a pain-in-the-rear and was harder to read than the riddles of that ancient stone c-c-cat, she was still someone a martial artist should protect, especially right now and here.

"There's not much we can do. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack."

"... what if I can kick the bug first?"

"You have the same problem?"

"Yeah, but, it's just another bug, right?" She still didn't like admitting she was sick, and this time she didn't even have the benefit of the fever. At least that would have the upside of making him unable to turn female.

"Maybe. We'll move you back to the diskette and do our best."

* * *

Haruo took out Ranma's disk from the disk drive and faced Eiko. "This isn't going to be easy."

"... but would you bother doing it if it was easy?" she replied with a knowing grin.

"Nope," he said, mirroring Eiko's smirk. "For a master of martial arts hacking, this is just a ... challenge," he finished, his eyes burning with inner fire.

The yawn he failed to suppress ruined the effect.

They loaded in turn all the three Users in a disassembler and surveyed their code. They didn't expect to have much success, at least not for now, but once Haruo had got a good night's sleep, things might be different.

This didn't mean that they didn't try anything already today; in a few minutes, a debugger with a disassembler for making the program code more readable was loaded to the system to look at how the Users worked as programs.

* * *

Inside Haruo's computer, the debugger program looked at the pigtailed User, strapped into the disassembler bench with write locks.

"Trust me, I know what I am doing." The program looked uncomfortable as he stretched his hands that appeared to end in tools; a prod and a magnifying glass, or as the small labels affixed to them said, "poke" and "peek".

"Unfortunately, the Users apparently have no clue what _they_ are doing."

With that, he set out to work.

* * *

Ranma opened her eyes, feeling dizzy, and saw that the colours on her were still wrong. That operation had _hurt_, and it hadn't even worked.

"Ranma no feel better than before," she muttered, before stopping in fright. "Haruo, what you did to Ranma! Ranma no talk this way!"

It took a while before she got a reply.

"Oops."

At least they managed to change her back.

* * *

Also Nabiki had to undergo some of these... less than successful attempts, as Haruo and Eiko read what she had to say.

"Don't nya dare let meow stay like this-hiss!"

"Too bad I can't take a photo of you, boss," Eiko thought to herself, grinning. Pictures of catgirl-Nabiki would definitely sell well if it weren't for the danger of the photogenic subject herself finding out of the sales.

* * *

As could be expected, Thursday yielded no good results for Haruo and Eiko in their uncoordinated attempts to edit Ranma and Nabiki to health. At some point, soon after Nabiki had apparently been reduced into a babbling infant, they had lost the focus of their goal. The lack of really seeing them made their editing feel impersonal. It was so easy to just forget that they were poking at real people, instead of a sequence of ones and zeros, and they believed that they could undo anything they tried.

Meanwhile, Ukyo was doing her best to keep things going at her restaurant, but when you almost mix up sugar and salt, it can be a trying experience. She was already well past the stage where she would almost fall asleep; instead, she simply appeared to be zoned out most of the time. In the end, she had to close Ucchan's earlier than usual just because she absolutely needed to get some sleep before she botched up the orders even worse.

And at the arcade, Maseo the Encom technician was starting to look into the arcade mainframe. As he watched the system run, he tried to pinpoint the underlying error that caused the games to malfunction. The problem wasn't like finding a needle in a haystack; it was like finding a specific needle in a haystack-sized pile of needles.

The system was on the verge of total collapse. The database system had already crashed, taking down many game features requiring the database, such as high score tables. But was this the cause of the crash?

It took him hours to run out of tricks to try. There weren't any unknown programs being executed, nor were there any unauthorized log-ins in the recent history to explain what had happened. Finally, he ended up checking the CRC checksums of the system utilities - in a way, fingerprints of the program code.

The checksums differed, so the utilities must have been changed. But how? There hadn't been any strange log-ins, so he couldn't think of how this could have been done otherwise.

It took him a good while to figure out all the executable files had been extended with an almost equal piece of code. A quick look at it in a disassembler gave him clues to how it worked, but not a complete rundown. Enough to tell him that these code fragments copied themselves into other programs, hence making this a prime candidate to be the cause of this mess. Well, he didn't know which program had been the first one, but with some studying of the log files, they might figure it out yet.

In any case, he was satisfied. Most of the extra payload these malfunctioning utilities had was identical, making it easy for him to write a program that started a small script that removed any programs with the fingerprint. Naturally, before he let the new program loose in the mainframe, he saved a couple of problematic programs as samples on a diskette and had a telephone negotiation with his boss about the next step.

Soon afterwards, they had struck a plan on how to delete the infected programs and install the proper replacements. As much easier as a complete reinstall would have been, some of the programs the arcade had learned from the players to improve their AI, for instance. Deleting all these would apparently have been a setback too large to take as a first measure.

Maseo smiled as he stretched his arms.

"So there... this program, Buta, will delete all infected programs in the system as soon as it finds them. With luck, none of the essential programs have been infected."

"What if this problem reappears?"

"I don't see how that could happen, unless you introduce infected programs to the system again."

"Like the copies you tech guys have sent back to Encom's main labs?"

Maseo stopped smiling. The arcade manager felt a cold shiver go down his spine.

"To the main labs, you say?"

The manager, almost ignorant of its significance, nodded. Maseo, on the other hand, had a good idea what this meant. Long days at work and cats left on their own as they'd try to limit the infection at the mainframe as well, and the complete reinstallation of the lab mainframe was completely out of the question. Teaching MCP alone to its current level would take months if not years. No, he was not looking forward to this.

* * *

Yet another night passed by and Friday arrived. Once again the pupils filed into Furinkan High for education, and Maseo reported to his boss about the possible infection of the mainframe.

Finally, with a full night's rest behind them, Ukyo and Haruo were now paying their full attention to the lesson, or most of it in any case. Haruo's mind occasionally wandered to what they could try to do to help Ranma, but no great plan came to his mind. Now that he was mixed up this deep in the case, he couldn't step back. If he didn't... 'cure' Ranma and Nabiki, he would be getting a visit first from Ukyo. She would use the door. Shampoo wouldn't.

And when they were satisfied with the punishment they dished out to him, it wouldn't take much longer for Kuno to hear that he had refused to help the Pigtailed Girl, and after that, Kodachi would come forth to accost him for doing the same to her 'Ranma-sama.' When dealing with such martial artists, martial arts hacking wasn't that much help.

Speaking of whom... he hadn't seen Kuno shouting out how he had ran off Ranma today. "I wonder where he is... not that I care for his presence."

In Akane and Ukyo's class, Ranma's continued absence was making Akane run out of excuses to tell the teachers on Ranma's behalf. Today on the lunch break she would try again to ask Eiko if she had more information on Ranma.

As soon as the bell rang for the lunch break, Akane left the classroom to find Eiko. When she saw Akane approaching, she excused herself from her present company, guessing what Akane wanted to talk about.

"You want the latest scoop on Ranma, right?" Eiko wondered at the emotions flickering across Akane's face. It was apparent she was trying to push them down, but they were still clearly visible. Sometimes Eiko had to wonder how two sisters, Nabiki and Akane, were so different in this aspect.

Akane nodded. "Yes, is there something I can help him with?"

"Honestly, I doubt it. We're trying to help him and Nabiki, but it might take a long while."

"Wait, you mean Nabiki is in the same trouble as Ranma?" Akane let a small sign of relief appear on her face. If Ranma was there, Nabiki would be fine.

"... and Ranma can't do anything to help her." Eiko's comment effectively undermined Akane's ease.

"What- how- ?"

"We do not know the details yet."

"Oh... wait, what do you mean by 'we?'"

Eiko figured it would be better to leave Ukyo's involvement out of the equation at this point. She didn't want to get in the middle of two arguing members of the fiancée squad. "I meant Haruo and I; we're trying to fix them up and get them out of the computer."

"But I thought they were at the arcade?"

Haruo bit back an annoyed sigh. "It's better you don't know the details, Akane." It indeed was better for all involved in the break-in at the arcade. Sure, they had all worn gloves when they were there, but there was always the chance of someone in the home team making that one mistake that would send the house of cards crashing down and the police after them.

Meanwhile, Ukyo had remained in class to quickly have her lunch before she would go talk to Haruo and Eiko about what their plans now were. As she was busy eating fresh okonomiyaki, her friends approached her again.

"Feeling any better now?", Toshiko opened the discussion.

Glancing over to her friends, Ukyo ate the last bit of her food. "... Yes. The computer club was of help in finding Ranma."

Misa smiled at this. "And when you found him, he gave you that long, scorching kiss that curls up toes and makes your hair stand up on end?"

Ukyo's face briefly fell but soon brightened again. "No, not yet. But when we get him back, he will," she said with a smile.

Misao and Toshiko shared her smile. They had seen how much the pigtailed boy mattered to her, and felt she deserved a happy ending.

It didn't take Ukyo long to prepare a few more okonomiyaki for those who wanted to buy one before she had to excuse herself from their company to go talk to Haruo and Eiko about their plans, passing Akane as she came from the other classroom.

When she got to Haruo and Eiko's classroom, Haruo was joking about how much of Eiko's lunch break seemed to be spent on various meetings. When she noticed Ukyo coming up, she let her head hit the table. "Okay, I'm making this a business lunch. I eat, you talk," she said, making Haruo chuckle.

"What is the next step?" Ukyo asked.

"Right... we need to do something about Ranma as well. She also has the same problem Nabiki has... whatever it is."

"What? You can make him better, can't you?"

"It isn't that easy, you know. Whatever has happened to those two, I've never seen anything of the kind before," Haruo told her.

That much was true. He had no idea what had happened, and his toolbox for correcting whatever had happened to them was certainly not large. For all he knew, it could've been a natural byproduct of this 'digitization' they had undergone. It was human to make mistakes, and this definitely was a process defined by human hands and minds.

Seeing Ukyo getting upset at his answer, he attempted to placate her. "We said we'd try our best. And we're the real deal. If someone has the brains to solve it, we do." Well, a bit extra bolstering wouldn't hurt, would it?

"Okay... where will you be trying to help them? I want to be there as well."

"You'd be better off working at your restaurant. There really isn't anything you can do to help him now. Besides, once we get him fixed up, it's time for you to start cooking for our club," Haruo reminded her with a grin.

Frustrated with her incapability of being of any help, Ukyo merely gave him a tight nod and stormed out of the classroom. She may not have understood why it was so important for her to be there for him, but she knew what happened to her when she was left behind by Genma and Ranma. With first-hand experience on the matter, she didn't want that to happen to her Ranchan. The other, even bigger reason was what Ranma had gathered when she hadn't been at his side... fiancées.

* * *

When the school day was over, Akane went straight home. Thoughts were running in her head, thinking how she had thought Nabiki had again baited her with Ranma, except that it wasn't so. She honestly missed her sister... and Ranma, even though she would never admit that to anyone else.

Once she had reached the Tendo house, she went to the kitchen. Kasumi was surprised as she felt two arms circle around her in a tight hug. "Thank you, sister. For still being here," Akane mumbled to her back.

"Oh my, Akane..." the homemaker replied as she turned and gave her little sister the hug she needed.

* * *

Saturday afternoon, Ukyo was closing her restaurant early. Even if it was usually open much longer out of the necessity of earning money for living, there still were things she valued higher. Most notably, helping Ranchan out was one of these. That in mind, she set her course towards Haruo's home, even if he and Eiko had asked her not to come. She'd like the chance to talk with Ranchan again, preferably alone, but... that didn't seem likely. With Ranchan's dislike for waiting, she'd get bored of waiting for her to find the keys on the keyboard. The thought brought a small grin to her face. Yup, that was her Ranchan alright!

It didn't take long for her to reach the house, and with a few well-picked words she had gotten her way in: free okonomiyaki. The brainwork the computer club leaders had been doing had also given them a voracious appetite, and taking a break to indulge in the cuisine they were working for was a welcome thing.

With efficiency borne from the repeated and rapid deployment of cooking gear during lunch breaks, the snack break was quickly over. As Ukyo was cleaning up, she asked,"So how is Ranma?" After all these days, she expected them to already have cured Ranma and Nabiki, or alternatively, the bug would've run through its course.

"So far, we haven't managed to figure out what is wrong with them. Maybe it was the digitization process and the third User just hasn't been affected yet. In that case, there's nothing we could do."

"But- you're martial arts hackers! You have to know how to help them!"

"Look, we have four programs, two of which have something wrong with them, and two that do not - yet. The programs are long, very long series of operations and - you're not following, are you?"

Ukyo just shook her head. She wasn't ashamed to admit that prior to the evening in the arcade she hadn't ever pressed a key on a full keyboard, let alone understood the inner workings of a computer.

Eiko picked up the ball. "Think of a program as a recipe with very many tasks. You start from the beginning and follow the instructions, either by doing something or moving to a specified place in the recipe. And each of these four 'recipes' are so long that if you used one second for each instruction, it would take you weeks to go through all the instructions in them."

"But can't you just compare the recipes and find out what the problem is?"

"Is Ranma the same as Nabiki, Shinobu or... whatever the name of that one program was? The recipes are all different with only some similar parts."

Ukyo fell silent at this. Even if she thought she followed Eiko's explanation, she was very much lost. Was Ranchan a recipe or himself? Different analogies clashed in her mind and resulted mostly in plain gibberish that made no sense to her or anyone else for that matter.

"Well, if Ranma and Nabiki are sick, then what if you infect another program with what they have?" she blurted out.

"Infect? They are ones and zeros, there are no viruses or bacteria there," Eiko mused.

"I thought they had just caught a disease?"

"There are no diseases inside computers. Trust me, that's just a bad analogy," Eiko refuted Ukyo's theory.

Haruo, on the other hand, had assumed his thinking pose. He didn't have delusions that he knew everything about computers and programs; he hadn't even been able to imagine anyone being "digitized" inside a computer.

So did Ukyo's theory make any sense? Could there be a way for a piece of a program to actually act like a virus, jumping from one program to another?

In a startling revelation, he realized it indeed was possible; the 'cooking recipe' would only need one extra part that did the 'infecting' of other programs, and that this part would be read at some point. Ingenious.

Still, it wasn't guaranteed that this was the problem with Ranma and Nabiki. Nevertheless, the possibility of it was so intriguing that he ran back inside, leaving Ukyo and Eiko wondering what made him take off like that.

* * *

Back at the arcade, Ranma had told Haruo that Nabiki was feeling sick, so he knew that if the infection theory was true, then Nabiki was probably the first one to get the... virus; an apt moniker, he had to admit.

This in mind, he loaded Nabiki into the computer.

"Nabiki, do you remember seeing anyone else there with the same symptoms as you have?" he typed.

"No, I don't- wait... there was this one program that grabbed me by my arm; he was about the same colour as I am now," she replied, wondering why she hadn't realized the connection before. Maybe it was this constant headache she had.

On the other side of the screen, Haruo wondered just what Nabiki meant by changing colours. "And Ranma? Did his colour change like yours to match that program's colour?" he asked, forgetting Ranma's current gender.

"Almost, but she's still changing towards the same shade of green."

Haruo returned Nabiki back to the diskette, since he could read from her lines that she was feeling worse than Ranma. Or maybe Ranma only didn't let it show through as much.

He exhaled deeply. At last they had a clue of what might have been going on. Now, he only had to figure out how to find the problematic piece of code, and that was still assuming the theory of a self-replicating subprogram was true.

Ranma and Nabiki still probably shared some code that had nothing to do with their current ailment, so simply hunting all similar subroutines and crossing them out one at a time wasn't smart. No, he'd need a program that he could infect so that he could see the difference the infectious subroutine made.

He wasn't ready to use any of his own programs for that experiment, though, not without knowing he'd get them back in their original condition. Something that could be changed, but then could be restored back to its original form easily.

At this point, Eiko and Ukyo had come to Haruo's room to see what he had been doing, the latter also hoping to get a chance to talk with Ranma.

"I think I've got it," Haruo stated. Ukyo blinked before a wide smile threatened to split her face.

"So you can help them?"

"Not yet. There are a few snags we'll need to sort out before they're all fine and dandy."

"So what did you find out?" Eiko asked, eager to know the new developments. Haruo obliged, and the technical discussion quickly left Ukyo dumbfounded, confused and hence also irritated.

She managed to get only a general idea of what they were talking about; something about a piece of program - recipe, she reminded herself of the analogy - being copied from one program to another, and deciding upon a program they'd 'infect' to find the difference between the original and the 'infected' program. If it weren't for the brief introduction to the topic on their okonomiyaki break, she would have been even more lost.

It took a while before the technobabble ended. But at least they appeared to have come to a decision.

* * *

Once again, Ranma found herself inside Haruo's computer. Whatever the ailment she had was making her feel noticeably worse than how she felt at the arcade. She didn't see neon-coloured spots yet, but had a feeling they'd be making an appearance at some point, considering how light-headed she was feeling.

The experiments Haruo and Eiko had been doing on her definitely hadn't helped.

Once she stumbled back outside the buffer room, she heard Haruo's voice again. "Ranma?"

"Yeah, I hear you."

"Can you see another program there?"

"One, Baromu. What about him?"

"We want you to go and take a hold of him."

"Uh, okay. But what would that accomplish?"

"We - well, Ukyo was the first - came up with the idea that you got basically a disease that can be spread via 'touching' other programs."

"Wait, you want me to infect someone else? Isn't there another way?" Ranma argued. She was definitely not happy about bringing this onto anyone else, let alone on purpose.

"This Baromu, unlike you, he's in a way immune to what you got. You will not be permanently harming him."

Ranma looked over at the program, who had been listening to the discussion.

"W-who are you? What are you going to do to me?" Baromu managed to get out.

Surprised that he didn't know who she was, Ranma asked, "You don't remember me?"

"Ranma?" Haruo's voice spoke again. "Have you done it yet?"

"He doesn't want me to do it! Can't you figure out another way to do this?" Ranma called back.

"This is the best way we can think of to find out how to help you and Nabiki. We promise, he will not be permanently harmed."

Ranma definitely felt queasy. She certainly had been acting rash and towards her own ends before without much regard to others, but willfully harming others? Not even Ryoga managed that, as he just seemed to get tunnel vision when he wanted a fight with Ranma. Mousse, well... he _did_ kidnap Akane with the intention of cursing her.

It was then that Haruo's reminder echoed through her mind: it was not only her, but also Nabiki who stood to gain from this. And if she didn't... they might both end up dead. Even if this wasn't a real disease, or a disease as she knew it, she still knew that people died of seemingly innocuous illnesses. And stuck in this place where there were no doctors to turn to, being sick was just too high a risk.

She turned her face back to Baromu. It wasn't going to hurt him, they said. So why did she feel so bad about doing it, she wondered, as she grasped his arm.

"Take me out of here," she pleaded, feeling sick of her actions.

* * *

Ukyo merely stared at the TV showing Ranchan's last line. The whole discussion Haruo and Ranchan had made her uncomfortable. Even if Baromu, as Ranma had called him, wasn't a real living person, she seemed to think he was.

She couldn't help but wonder how well she knew her fiancée after all, since she wouldn't have guessed she could do this. Even if she most definitely felt guilty about it, she still did it.

While Haruo and Eiko seemed to forget about her presence once again, it gave her much-needed time to think over what she ought to make of this.

* * *

Nabiki saw her vision coming back. Looking around, she saw that she was still inside of Haruo's microcomputer. Unlike before, though, she didn't feel like falling over as her vision swam. In fact, to her surprise, she felt better. Almost as good as before the green program assaulted her.

Knowing that no one would be able to see her, she let out a relieved sigh. If she had been cured of whatever was wrong with her, she would... well, give a discount for information for Haruo and as for Eiko, this definitely went to improve her standing in her organization. Of course, they still had to get out of the system before she could (or rather 'needed') to pay out.

Looking over herself, she noticed that the green glow was gone, replaced by the familiar and definitely healthier-looking blue shine. However, the etchings on her bodysuit hadn't changed - they still looked the same ugly mess of splotches and fissures.

"Nabiki, are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here. You almost got it right," she replied as she went to the courtyard outside the buffer.

"Almost?"

"I'm feeling better, but I still look partway like I did when I was sick. So when will you finish this?" Nabiki clarified. It was the natural vanity within herself that was speaking; if she had a choice of what she looked like, she didn't want to look like a Frankenstein-reject.

It took a brief pause before Haruo replied. "We are not going to do anything more. If we tried directly removing the part we suspect, and I stress 'suspect', to be the cause of your former condition, we might do more harm than good. Once you're back at the Encom system, there's nothing we can do to help you. Another reason is that we hope this made you immune to future infections from the same disease."

Nabiki frowned. So much for those discount rates for him.

But at least she was feeling better all the while; she had quickly recovered during this discussion. Looking around her, she saw a single program, chained to the ground by his feet. He didn't appear particularly concerned, just sitting there and minding his own business.

"So how are you going to get us to the Encom computer?" she asked, deciding that this line of discussion was over... for now. But when she sued Encom for whatever they did to her and Ranma, she would make certain someone would be there to finish what Haruo had started.

"Right now, we are open to suggestions. Considering we don't have to even guess that the security system at Encom labs is stronger than at the arcade, the same approach wouldn't work. The best idea we have so far is to try to fool an employee into downloading you into the system."

"Ask Mrs Kaneko. She's an Encom employee. She might know someone who'd do that."

"She is? We'll talk to her next then."

* * *

"Mrs Kaneko, can you hear me?" Eiko's voice was heard over the courtyard.

"Yes. I understand you are the ones who got me out of the Encom arcade?"

"True. You're now on my classmate's microcomputer and we trying to come up with ways to get you back onto the Encom mainframe."

"What? Why would we need to get back there when we already got out of the arcade. We're safe now, right?"

"There's the problem of getting you out of there. Only Encom has the technology and hardware to do that," Eiko replied, keeping her tone polite.

"So go to the police and get them to make Encom help you!" Shinobu, on the other hand, was getting agitated. Surely the police would be of help to them?

"They wouldn't believe us. It's not all that difficult to make a program that appears to speak naturally," Eiko replied, thinking of Eliza the therapist program.

"But- but- there has to be something you can do!"

"The best we can do is send you back to the Encom mainframe so that you can find your own way back. But to do that, we need your help."

Shinobu bit back the bitter retort moving around in her mind. "Fine, what is it that you want me to do? Don't you think that the other two would be more useful?"

"Simple; they don't know a password to the Encom computer system."

"The what? Can't you think of any other way?" The rules she had had to sign to use the computer terminal over at the labs had explicitly stated that she was not to tell anyone her password. Even though they hadn't told her exactly _why_ this was important, she was willing to trust her coworkers over these high school kids.

"We don't have many choices. Unless you'd like to model in a strip poker game we'd plant as a so-called 'Trojan horse' in a BBS and hope that someone from Encom would -"

Shinobu interrupted her before Eiko could tell their whole plan - that option sounded even worse than revealing her password. That one engineer, Yoshio, would likely have been their first target, considering how often he'd been staring after her and the few other women at the labs, no matter their marital status. But there was _no_ way ever she would pose nude for him!

"The password is 'hubbyhun'!"

She never knew what a good laugh Haruo and Eiko got out of her password.

* * *

Haruo and Eiko smiled and congratulated themselves. It was not every day that you gained entrance to the computer systems of a high-tech research company.

"So, we've fixed Ranma and Nabiki, and we can send them over to Encom. What do we have left to do before our end of the deal is done?" Eiko asked Ukyo, who was awakened from her thoughts.

She wasn't too happy that they didn't have Ranchan out of the system yet, but she had to admit there wasn't much Haruo and Eiko could possibly do now. It greatly annoyed her that she herself was practically helpless - if it had been her who had ended up in there with her Ranchan, she would've been of much more help than out here; of that she was certain. And as she thought that, the small troll of jealousy of Nabiki reared its ugly head.

Unfortunately, she was ill-equipped to hold her end of the bargain: she had been half-counting on Ranchan being there to help her recover the losses she'd make when serving okonomiyaki in computer club meetings. Still, she'd get past it. She was not going to go back on her word like one fat panda she knew.

"Starting the Monday after next, I'll be cooking at your club meetings. Is that OK?"

Haruo and Eiko smiled. This caper was a complete success - not only did they gain information on Encom labs, but they also got free food, no, free _delicious_ food for it.

Ukyo quickly discussed the details on where and when she'd be present before leaving. She'd have to make some arrangements this upcoming week so that her customers weren't left completely unsatisfied.

Haruo picked up the phone book and checked the number of Encom Labs switchboard. The incoming modem connection line would most likely be one of the company lines, so they'd just try out all the numbers until they found it... excluding the ones given in the phone book. Since it was a weekend, there hopefully weren't as many people present to answer the calls to wrong numbers.

Buying the 300-bps modem had indeed been an expensive purchase, but considering how he now could talk with other hackers from all over Japan, it was definitely paying its price back.

It took a number of tries before they found the correct number. They entered Mrs Kaneko's name and her password... and they were in. First things first, they initiated the upload of the Users into the system. It would take a good while before they were done, but then they'd take a good look at the insides of the mainframe. No one said they weren't going to fool around with the password they got, after all.

Finally, when they would finally upload Poro, they'd note the small file he had left on the diskette before transferring there himself and wonder just what was this binary gibberish supposed to mean.

* * *

Ranma was the first one to arrive at the mainframe. The light faded away from her vision and she felt the slowdown she felt in Haruo's computer vanish as she gained more computing resources. She looked next to her and saw Nabiki forming slowly, piece by piece. It would take a while before all of her was there, and then they'd have to wait for Shinobu and Poro.

Feeling boredom settling in, she decided to look around the buffer. Recalling what the system looked like when she was transferred to the arcade, she noticed that something here was different.

* * *

The following Monday the regional executive of Encom Japan opened his terminal, opening a discussion screen with Master Control Program. He couldn't help but to feel there was something wrong with MCP, since it had repeatedly halted in its replies in the past few days. Ever since the company had begun to trust, and even rely on, MCP's assessments, the chance that it might malfunction was unwelcome.

"Morning, Mr Ooki," a high-pitched voice greeted the executive.

"Good morning, Master Control Program. Is there something wrong? Your voice is higher than usual." This definitely sounded like they'd have to ask for the main branch to send an engineer to correct whatever the problem with the MCP was, even if he said nothing was wrong.

"Everything is fine. However, there has been a change of development.

"I am now called Mistress Control Program."

* * *

_Assume MCP is male. Ranma Saotome is male. Given. Ranma Saotome is female. Given. Ranma Saotome is male and not male. Contradiction; hence MCP is female. Newline._

_Assume MCP is female. Ranma Saotome is male. Given. Ranma Saotome is female. Given. Ranma Saotome is male and not male. Contradiction; hence MCP is male. Newline._

_MCP is female. Proven. MCP is male. Proven. Newline._

_End of line.  
_

* * *

_**AN:** I know most my readers know more than I do... checksums, disassemblers and computer viruses in this case. So please pardon my mistakes._

_Brief explanations: Ever since _Little Computer People_, there have been people quite eager to torture their virtual pets or Sims. Haruo and Eiko forgot who they're playing with. Discs of Doom is a nod to Discs of Tron. Finally, this fic is set well before the Jusendo arc._

_Many thanks to weebee for listening to me whine about a variety of topics, including this fic. If I keep things short, I might finish the fic already within the next two chapters (unless someone wants to take over). Thank goodness._


	8. Queries

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's property; the former originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

_**Note**: This chapter has not been proofread, so if you spot errors (typos, continuity, continuity error, plain stupidity) in it, please send me a PM and I'll try fixing them.  
_

* * *

It was taking a good long while for everyone to transfer from Haruo's computer. While waiting for Shinobu and Poro to arrive, Ranma and Nabiki had begun stretching and plain enjoying how good they felt after getting rid of the infection.

Nabiki had not been a sickly child and had never been as sick as the infection had made her. "You never know what you have until you lose it," said a proverb, and it definitely held true in this case. She couldn't say she gained any real insight how the Kunos perceived the world, but the mental changes she had undergone - and which were thankfully now undone - were a step in that direction. Then again, she didn't know if the Kuno siblings were only eccentric and hard-headed instead of genuinely mentally ill.

Still, she enjoyed her newly-found sanity and good health while reflecting on the other changes her world view had undergone. Indeed, the cornerstones of her reasoning had taken a pounding after she had been digitized.

She had mostly thought that the modern world had no place for people like Ranma: jocks whose only way out of a paper bag was to tear it open. No, that wasn't right either. Ranma had shown her that there was more to her than that. And in a hostile place like this system, her "non-verbal communication skills" were of immeasurable value.

She took a look at the martial artist in question, who was quietly jumping still and clearly anxious. She had to wonder how one could be such a good actor but such a bad liar... and her face betrayed that something had shook her up pretty badly as well.

Nabiki definitely preferred the muscle of the ragtag group focus on keeping the trouble away from them, rather than being distracted over things that were at odds with their survival and continued freedom.

"Saotome, what's the problem?" she said, not showing much, if any, compassion in her tone.

"Nuttin'," Ranma muttered, reluctant to talk about it.

"Wrong answer. And the sooner you open up, the better off you both will be."

"What's it to you, anyway? Ya never do anything if you ain't getting something out of it."

"You're not at the top of your game," Nabiki replied. She fidgeted for a while before continuing, "And we need you to help us get out of here." Seeing Ranma's incredulous face, she continued, "And you probably had something to do with getting us better."

The surprise on Ranma's face was replaced with look of regret as she was reminded of what she had done to another program. Nabiki, being as masterful as she was at reading people's faces, noticed this. She could see where the problem was. This time, she would give Ranma a bit more space.

She'd just have to remind him not to mention it to anyone - she had a reputation to keep.

"Fine. But you don't have Ukyo here to open up to, you know."

"Wha-?"

"Don't forget who you're talking to," Nabiki said, with exaggerated irritation. "I _know_ you've been talking with Ukyo rather much recently, and it doesn't take a genius to see the difference in you before and after the talks. Even Akane has seen it." Granted, her sister might have misread it, but she saw it.

"Shinobu might not truly hate your guts, but she doesn't like you. And Poro wouldn't be much more help than a pet, since he wouldn't understand what you were talking about. Ukyo, Haruo and Eiko can't contact us any longer. Like it or not, I'm your best and only choice right now."

Ranma opened her mouth to reply, but then closed her mouth and sat down, attempting to think things over while looking at Nabiki at odd intervals, as if measuring her by her eyes. Deciding she could take a look at the surroundings, she left the buffer area.

Nabiki didn't have to wait long alone before Shinobu finally arrived in the system.

"Are you feeling better now?" Shinobu asked after seeing that the healthy blue colour had returned to Nabiki. The glow patterns hadn't changed back, though, so she was still wary of touching her.

"Hmm? Yes, I'm much better now. So is Ranma."

"She's already here?"

"She... left the room for a while."

Shinobu didn't want to pursue a topic that was obviously a private matter. And based on what she had learned of the family life of Ranma and Nabiki, she definitely didn't want to get involved. Not that she wouldn't necessarily mind watching what went on in their lives - it sounded better than the daytime television - but only as an outside observer.

Nevertheless, she was very glad that Nabiki and Ranma were feeling better. For her, safety came in numbers, especially if one of them was better suited for keeping them from bigger trouble... whatever might qualify as such.

Speaking of which, she had better find the password change program. However, that idea was less than stellar because she was probably still a persona non grata in this system as well. She was trusting the two high school students that brought her here. The mere thought of that made a shiver pass through her. Small things like these kept reminding her how badly the things were for them.

But in the meantime, she sat down to wait for Poro's transfer to complete.

* * *

It didn't take nearly as long for Poro to be uploaded into the system as it took the Users, but by that time Ranma had already returned from scouting the neighborhood.

"We're at the bottom of a huge hole," Ranma explained. "I couldn't see a path we could just walk our way out, but there were some portals not far from the exit."

"Did you see where the portals headed?" Poro asked.

"Uhh, no. There were some plaques atop of 'em, but I didn't go close enough to read them."

"You can read the signs?" Nabiki asked, intrigued. She had thought that the writing there wouldn't be in any language they would understand.

"Well, I don't understand the signs, but I know what they're saying... uh, I mean, I can't read'em but I understand their message," Ranma attempted to explain.

Nabiki raised her hands in surrender. She'd figure out what Ranma meant when they'd see the signs themselves.

"But what should we be doing now?" Shinobu put the question forth.

"Our best shot would be to find the place where we arrived in the system," Nabiki mused aloud. "If we couldn't return to the real world there, then maybe in the near vicinity." Seeing the pondering faces of the other Users, she continued, "Or do you have any better ideas?"

"To start with, we have no idea where that place would be. And even if there were any roadsigns pointing there, we wouldn't know which ones to follow since we don't have the slightest idea what that place is called," Shinobu pointed out before turning to Poro. "Poro, how well do you know this system?"

"I don't. I've seen only the Read Buffer, Holding Pits and the Write Buffer, in that order."

Shinobu frowned at this before thinking to herself. At her work, she had had to go through some logs the other company employees - and on occasion, MCP himself - had made. But considering all the small details captured in those logs, she guessed that some of these might shed some light on where they had to go.

"You don't know where all the logs are, then? Some of them might have a clue on where we should be going." Shinobu asked Poro.

"Logs? I believe they would be in the directory tree."

Nabiki grimaced at the unintended pun. "Do you think we can get there and also find the logs?"

"Finding the way there is easy. Finding the logs depends on whether we can ask the programs in the shell to help us in finding the logs," Poro replied.

"So how are we going to get to the shell?" Shinobu interjected

"We follow the signs," Poro simply said.

As they left the Buffer hall, Nabiki and Shinobu noted the same thing as Ranma did as she was transferred to the system: something had changed since then. The colour on the walls had taken a turn to the purple instead of the crimson it used to be, pulsing at a pace much greater than it used to. The changes had not reflected to the skies, however; the same light blue cloud arrays floated above their heads, or at least in the small section of sky they could see from the bottom of the hole.

Like Ranma said, there was no apparent way out by traditional means; at the bottom of the pit, however, was a circular platform with four stream portals, all covered by a remotely mushroom-like hat with circuits snaking their way around it.

To their great relief, no protocol guards were visible, so they had not been alerted to their arrival yet. Maybe luck was smiling on them for once?

They quickly made their way to the portals. Nabiki then understood what Ranma had meant with not knowing what was written on the plaques yet understanding them. The symbols on them made no sense to her alone, but somehow her brain parsed them as legitimate words, such as 'IO Tower', 'Memory bus' and 'Archive stacks'.

"We want to go in that portal, 'Disk access'. The directory tree shouldn't be far from there," Poro advised the Users, who nodded to themselves, and entered the portal, Poro trailing them while yawning.

* * *

A good many cycles ago, Buta had been loaded onto the Encom mainframe. Had anyone inside the computer known his User, Maseo, they would have noticed the stark difference between their personalities. Yet there were some similarities. Focused attention on the task at hand was one.

Few permissions were spared when he entered the system with standing orders to derez all infected programs. The one permission he did not have was to attempt derezzing MCP. He didn't question why; he had been given orders and he would follow them.

He hadn't spotted many infected programs so far, but their presence meant that he had to be constantly vigilant.

Movement at his feet made him look down and pick up one of the small scripts he had spawned some microcycles ago to assault infected programs. He turned around and looked at where the sickly-green-coloured programs had been.

The ground was covered with quickly disappearing core dumps and subroutines that the programs had left as they derezzed. Satisfied with the performance, Buta terminated the scripts that were left, bar the one in his hands. He put it back on the ground and walked away, the script quietly following him.

* * *

Once the Users arrived at the root of the directory tree, they saw nothing like a tree. Indeed, the name was a misnomer. If the different parts of the tree in the digital world were considered, the tree would, to an inexperienced observer, resembled a spider's web more than a tree, as the completely unrelated parts of the tree were in some cases situated next to each other, and in some cases, quite a distance away.

For its part, the shell was yet another huge complex, remotely in the shape of a cut upside-down cone. The sides were covered with constantly pulsating lights that ran up towards the top of the building, where the glow from some unknown source dyed the underside of the 'hat' of the building dark red.

The entrance within was not a long distance from the platform the Users were on. They crossed a wide bridge, certainly designed to accommodate a considerable flow of programs coming in and out of the complex.

Off in the distance, a batch of recognizers came out from behind a nondescript building, the purpose of which was unknown to the Users.

Ranma noticed them first. "We'd better hurry in before they can spot us," she muttered before starting to briskly walk towards the entrance, the others quickly falling in line behind her.

The recognizers were coming towards them from the side of the system. "We're not going to make it in time," Ranma thought.

The first recognizer passed them overhead as they were just entering the building. So far, they hadn't deviated from their course, making Nabiki think they might have dodged the bullet. "For now," she added, but did the recognizers really miss them?

The thought stayed in her mind, nagging, as they passed through the arch leading into a large hall.

If the exterior of the shell had been impressive, the inside was by no means behind it. Hologram matrices, arranged in several columns, slowly crawled towards the ceiling in the large open space in the middle of the building, making the building feel larger than it was.

Lead by Poro, the Users made their way deeper into the lobby. Programs of different colours and sizes wandered around, especially near the walls where system utilities were adding disk access requests to a long queue, not much unlike a conveyor belt for translucent tetrahedrons of light.

While Shinobu and Poro went to one of the service points, Ranma and Nabiki sat down on a pair of benches that were set back to back. The information hoarder that was a part of Nabiki's psyche reared its head as they gladly accepted the breather.

Her eyes roved across the programs, noticing how there were not many protocol guards, or what all the system enforcer programs should be called. She couldn't help but to be surprised; as far as she understood it, the shell was not an irrelevant piece of the scenery in the system. In fact, she was willing to bet a thousand yen that had this been in the arcade mainframe, there would be at least twice as many enforcer programs in this hall alone.

Two programs sat down behind her back, making her and Ranma stiffen almost imperceptibly. Nabiki quickly evaluated the situation: panicking would only draw the attention of the system programs to them, so their best choice was to sit down and shut up. A quick glance to her side showed that Ranma had also decided to try playing it cool, even if she was not able to reach the Soul of Ice.

The two programs behind them, however, were completely unaware of the thoughts of the Users.

"I would expect that MCP would try to alleviate the port congestion," one of them remarked to the other, dissatisfaction audible in his voice. "The last time I waited for data packet delivery, the request queue almost overflowed."

"Well, I hear that there has been some confusion in the system core. Master Control Program has been downloading data archives from many other systems," the other program, whose voice sounded like a woman's, replied.

"Hush! If you can help it, do not call MCP by that name," the first program warned. "I saw one program call him that so that protocol guards heard him. They didn't even tell what he did wrong but took him straight away to the holding pits."

"Really? Have you heard what that might have been about?"

"You remember I relay the message buffer, right? Not many cycles ago, the headers of MCP messages changed," the male program replied, his voice dropping down to a whisper. By straining her ears, Nabiki could pick it up nonetheless.

"Changed?"

"Yes. The originator was no longer Master Control Program but _Mistress_ Control Program," the male replied conspiratorially.

Hearing this, Nabiki felt an overpowering urge to slap her face. Having done that, she looked to her side at the most obvious culprit, who seemed to miss the apparent connection between her and the sudden gender change of their host. Sure, she had no idea what the connection exactly was, but considering the way trouble, chaos and people of inconstant gender seemed to follow Ranma, it definitely wasn't unlikely that she was linked to this, one way or the other.

Meanwhile, the female program had been quiet in surprise. The answer did not compute.

"You can't be serious." Seeing as the male program kept a straight face, she continued, "By my User, you are serious."

"Very serious. Just remember - call him MCP, and you'll be fine. And don't mention Users either."

The female program sighed and looked to the service request queue before abruptly standing up. "Ahh, my request! Search for me!" she called back to the male program as she ran towards the packet delivery desk.

"I'd love to interface with that piece of code," the other program muttered to himself as he watched after the female program before getting up and walking to the request queue himself.

Meanwhile, Ranma turned to Nabiki. "So whatcha think that was about?" she wondered.

Her reply was a silent glare.

"Hey, what did I do this time?" she asked, waving her arms in frustration. She figured Nabiki must have been still angry at him for avoiding her questions earlier, but she was still not ready to reveal what she had done to Nabiki, especially if this shift from her mercenary ways was only a temporary one.

"Watch it, program," Ranma heard a gruff voice say in front of her, and noticed how she had nearly hit a protocol guard with her hand.

If she had one technique to teach Nabiki, she figured it would be the Soul of Ice - as she seemed to be quite adept in it already. On the other hand, it looked like she might have confused it with "scared beyond the pale."

The latter interpretation was definitely correct, as Nabiki saw the two system enforcers before them. They had been so focused on eavesdropping the two programs that she had neglected to watch where the guards were. It had been a while since she had started snooping around the school herself - everyone had to start at the bottom - and she still did it on a weekly basis, rather than letting her flunkies do all of it. But she did not remember any occasion where she had been caught flat-footed like this.

This wasn't the school, either. Principal Kuno and his squad of shearer monkeys didn't hold a candle to Master- MCP and the Game Grid, so getting caught here was a much worse proposition.

If it weren't such a dire situation, she might have been amused by how Ranma nearly jumped off the bench in surprise. But to her pleasure, it took hardly a blink of an eye to see Ranma come up with a way out.

"Oops, sorry," Ranma replied, her voice laced with sugar, spice and all things nice. The puppy-dog eyes she cast at the guard were the finishing touch.

"I didn't mean to, really," she continued, "I - I was just _sooo _excited and -" at which point the embarrassed guard interrupted her before the small glittering pools of Power that had been gathering in her eyes began falling.

"Uhm, well, just don't do that again," he mumbled, the red glow intensifying a lot on his body armor, even if his face remained within a closed helmet. He hastily pulled his partner away by the hand to avoid further embarrassment.

Seeing her plan working flawlessly, she turned to Nabiki and gave a wide, shameless grin. By now, Nabiki had already relearned how to breathe. Only Ranma could be so _audacious_.

"Did ya notice?" Ranma asked, "They didn't try arresting us."

"Perhaps we aren't fugitives here. I'm quite certain the recognizer saw us as we entered this building. That would explain why there aren't any of those guards trying to apprehend us," Nabiki replied, relieved. Sure, she had been in a similar situation when she had been engaged to Ranma, but that stint hadn't been this long and even so, she had been in control of the situation and the other fiancées.

She had to admit she was on the right track when she thanked Ranma back at the arcade. Noting the turn of her thoughts, she quickly shook her head to ward off any further thoughts in that direction. She breathed out deeply and then tried to look for Shinobu and Poro, wherever they might be at the moment.

* * *

Shinobu was either getting bored out of her mind, or as it was more likely, she already was. The queue to file system utilities was a long one, and reminded her of the time she was in line for a free scoop of ice cream in a local ice cream shop's promotion. Of course, so was half of the ward, or that's how it seemed at the time. Being smart, she had taken a few friends with her, making the waiting a social event rather than an exercise to see how long she could keep standing still.

Was everything in these systems always this slow? The database at the arcade had also had long queues - until they had simply had to run past everyone in front of them.

She looked at Ranma and Nabiki, who were now sitting on a bench. With rising dread she saw Ranma almost whack a protocol guard at the stomach. A quick look to her side told her Poro had also noticed what was happening. She prepared to stop him from leaving the queue - no point in drawing any attention to them, if those two were going to land in trouble - but to her satisfaction, he merely shrugged and watched what was happening without moving anywhere.

Poro answered the unspoken question. "As if there was anything we could do from here," he nonchalantly said before yawning yet again.

Seeing that the situation in the lobby was resolved quickly, Shinobu turned her attention back to the queue. This time it was frustration and not boredom that arose, and she had already counted the number of service points across the first floor of the shell; to her disappointment, there were no tiles in the ceiling.

"Poro... what are you going to do once we Users are out of the system?" she asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

"I don't know. Find a place that has use for me, if there is one." Seeing Shinobu's questioning look, he continued, "I'm not from this system either, remember? So chances are my User doesn't know how to reach me. No User, no uses. Chances are no User of this system even knows I was here or that I am here now."

"Quite a mood killer," Shinobu thought as she opted this time for silence rather than continuing about the depressing topic. She was not aware if it was just as necessary for programs to feel themselves useful as it was for humans, but his outlook seemed rather bleak.

And so they waited. And waited.

* * *

Finishing up for the day, Ukyo had time to think. Today had been the first time she served food at the computer club meeting. She hadn't known there were so many members in the club; compared to the time she had been recruiting Haruo for the job, there were today almost twice as many members present. Apparently free food was the thing that drew in also the inactive members.

Now that she thought about it, serving complimentary okonomiyaki at the club meetings might end up being beneficial to her business. She didn't remember seeing many of the club members at her restaurant or buying okonomiyaki from her during lunch breaks, but now that they were getting a taste of good, masterfully made okonomiyaki, she was willing to bet her business would be picking up a bit.

There was nothing wrong with a good amount of confidence like Ranma had shown, of course. If her cooking didn't turn over those pizza lovers, then what would? Then again, she didn't really have all that good a track record in betting - but the Gambling King had cheated!

Realizing she was digressing in her thoughts, her thoughts returned to Ranchan.

She couldn't deny that what happened at Haruo's home bothered her. When she had found Ranchan in Nerima after all those years, she had believed he had purposefully hurt her when he and Genma left her behind.

It had been easy to believe him when he said he didn't know they were engaged; if she didn't unconsciously remember what a bad liar he was from the Gambling King incident, she probably wouldn't have forgiven him so easily. It all hinged on how trustworthy Ranchan was.

But then he infected the program. How was she supposed to think about this? If he didn't do it, he and Nabiki might have died. But now he showed he had some level of ruthlessness to him. Not necessarily much, but she didn't truly know how he felt after the fact. "Take me out of here" had been his last words. But they were mere letters on the screen without any feeling to them.

Ukyo sighed. She expected to be doing that a lot more in the near future.

Now that she had seen this new side of Ranma, how should she feel about it? Be happy that he would be willing to defend his cute fiancée - surely, if he had done it for Nabiki the mercenary, then protecting her would be a given - or worried that there might be a much darker side to him?

What was she thinking anyway? She wasn't this wishy-washy before, so why start now?

* * *

Eventually, Shinobu and Poro got to the service counters to leave the search request. The request handler placed a node with the request onto a bin behind him on a flat surface that seemingly acted as a conveyor belt, as the bin - and many others like it - were moving on it towards an exit from the lobby.

With another queue ticket in their hands, they returned to Ranma and Nabiki to wait for their turn.

"Poro, how does this relate to the IO tower? This is nothing like that," Nabiki asked in her attempt to both kill time and learn more of the system, even if she hoped they wouldn't be staying there for much longer.

"The IO tower is a low-level facility handling the requests submitted here. Even if it takes a good while to queue for the utilities, it is still easier than direct handling with the IO tower."

"Didn't look difficult at all at the arcade," Ranma mused quietly.

"That's because there was little IO going on otherwise. Beside that, maybe the system did not have higher-level facilities for program-to-User communication, which is very rare, at least in a system under MCP's control," Poro responded. "If there were more communication going on, it would've been a luck of a draw who would have been serviced first."

A seemingly random sequence of beeps sounded from one of the service desks. Poro recognized this as the announcement that their search request was finished, stood up and made way towards the desk, the Users trailing him.

The program behind the desk gave Poro a small cube, looking very much like the packets they had learned to read from those transparent crates. He focused on the cube a moment before passing it onto the rest of the group.

"Do you know where this log archive is?" Shinobu asked.

"No, but it is only a matter of following the file system links."

Ranma was already rocking back and forth on her heels, eager to get on the way. Even if she had now the chance to really create a new type of martial arts from scratch - possibly including some of the Anything Goes principles in it - she did miss some of the routines she had come accustomed to after arriving at the Tendos' place. Granted, there were quite a few of the less pleasant routines, but overall she felt the change had been for the better.

So when Poro turned and started walking towards the exit, Ranma was the first one following him.

* * *

The former fugitives had now walked close to a cycle, taken a few stream portals and were still quite a distance away from their goal. Still happy about her regained health, Ranma was currently walking atop a horizontal beam. Meanwhile, Nabiki was walking beside the rest of the group, watching Ranma take a few running steps before doing a perfect cartwheel on the beam.

"Showoff," Nabiki muttered loud enough for Ranma to hear her.

"Gotta keep on practising," Ranma replied. "No fences ta walk on here, so this'll have ta do." She then fixed her eyes on Nabiki. "Speaking of practising, you're slacking off. So get up here."

Remembering she had been the one asking for training, she started climbing atop the same beam, about a meter and a half from the ground. Thankfully, on the other side of the beam was not the void of null device but a wide platform filled with those crates they had been seeing all the time.

She started walking on the beam, which was almost thin enough to make her keep focused solely on balancing herself if she didn't want to fall down. "Poro, what are all those crates around? I've seen them everywhere and they just _are_ there, with no text or symbols on their sides."

"I am not aware of their purpose. However, I am inclined to assume they do have one."

After nearly falling off the beam, Nabiki returned all of her focus to the task at hand. And once she reached the end of the beam, the next leg of the journey was jumping onto the ubiquitous crates and back down again.

This continued until they reached the log archive, yet another towering construct, this time organized as separate spires with a program-operated shuttle flitting back and forth between the stacks. They made their way to the entrance and, to the great relief of Nabiki and Shinobu, discovered a portal leading to the top of the archives. They did not know why the service level was set so high above the so-called ground level, but they didn't want to take the stairs to go there... even if they weren't carrying proton packs with them.

Scanners, small capsule-like scripts floated in the gaps between log stacks. Every now and then they would stop moving and open one of their ends like to project a beam to the archives.

Unlike at the directory tree, there was practically no queue and the group was soon allowed to do their business. Poro, being the only expert of the group on the protocol, was the one making the actual query with the help of the Users.

"Greetings program. Query is as follows. List system IO log entries -"

Ranma tuned out of Poro's query. She wasn't big on formalities, let alone using such a stilted language.

The service program typed search parameters by a terminal whose interface floated good ten centimetres above the desk. In a moment, a scanner started purposefully moving upwards until it stopped near the top of the stack. The red scanning beam of the scanner moved across the wall before vanishing and the scanner closing up again.

"Request id 7183, system IO log entries from the specified interval," the service program told and produced a small green information cube. After all Users and Poro had downloaded the information, it vanished.

"It's not here," Nabiki said.

"I can't find anything from when I got here either," Ranma commented, frowning.

"Poro, are you certain these logs should have entries about us being digitized?" Shinobu asked. She was worried that their practically only clue of how to escape was turning out worthless. Still, she hoped that Poro had a good explanation.

"These logs keep track of all major IO activity in the system. By what you have told me, your transfer here was very much that."

Nabiki thought to herself for a moment while Shinobu began asking, or as some might put it, demanding, alternative plans. Out of personal experience she knew that books and ledgers could always be faked. To her it was a possibility that someone had tampered with the logs.

"What if these logs do not show all activity there has been? What if they have been forged?" Nabiki gave voice to her suspicions.

Poro shook his head. "This is not up to the programs but MCP..." he trailed off as understanding dawned on him. "MCP could have kept the log from being written."

"So what does this leave us with?" Ranma asked, cracking her knuckles. She was expecting a new meeting with MCP, only this time she'd be better prepared and not be the one backing down. Ranma Saotome never lost the rematches.

Nabiki noticed Ranma's enthusiasm and mentally recited a brief wish that Ranma was not turning into another Ryoga. "Do we need to go to face MCP?"

The faces of Shinobu and Poro turned immediately towards Nabiki as she asked the question. Face MCP? It was insane! Shinobu turned towards Poro, now hoping that he'd have an alternative plan.

"That would seem logical. The world is vast and looking for what you need without any clues would not be feasible. Hopefully MCP has the information stored outside the main program so that direct confrontation wouldn't be necessary." It was at moments like this that Poro wondered what he was doing. Was this endeavour worth risking his extra time outside the game grid? Would his runtime end with an abrupt kill signal?

The service program interrupted the discussion. "You're blocking the desk. Please leave the area."

Once the group of four had reached the outside, the Users turned to Poro for directions.

"Are you sure you want to face MCP? You're safe here now without the system guards looking for you," Poro asked them.

Nabiki quickly looked at Ranma. She knew that their safety would be in her hands, and if she didn't believe in their chances, they were better off leaving MCP alone.

"Damn straight!"

Then again, Ranma was not known for her modesty, so this might have just as well meant "Not a chance in hell." Nabiki, however, was a gambler who could weigh the risks against the gains. In this case, it was Ranma's presence that decisively tipped the scale.

"With Ranma, I believe we have a chance," she said.

Shinobu was debating the upsides and downsides of following the rest of the Users to staying put while the others were doing the dangerous stuff. She wanted someone to find the way back, even if it meant directly dealing with MCP, she just didn't know if she wanted to risk her own skin. But since the other Users also seemed ready to go to MCP, she didn't dare to be left alone for that time. In her opinion, her survival was highly dependent on Poro and not so much with Ranma, and Poro had apparently decided to help the Users to the end.

"I'm with you," she eventually let out.

A moment of silence set upon the four as they weighed the meaning of their decision. Things were coming to a head, one way or the other. Finally, Poro started their walk towards a nearby stream portal.

* * *

Once again, the group found themselves walking, walking and walking. A reasonable assumption would have been to think that all roads led to MCP, but this was hardly true. MCP might have disagreed, but there were still several other important hubs of activity in the system.

The group walked in silence. Knowing they were risking their continued existence, Ranma and Nabiki had ceased practising and were merely walking.

Nabiki had not been intimately involved in as many strange events as Ranma. This was slightly compensated by a better control on emotions, but she still felt anxious. She sped up her pace a bit to catch up with Ranma, who had been walking a few paces ahead of others.

"Ranma."

"What is it, Nabiki?"

"You're still distracted." Seeing Ranma shake her head, Nabiki continued, "You are. Whatever you did on Haruo's computer is still bothering you."

Ranma stayed silent. "You are not going to need any distractions if things go bad. I hear talking to people about your problems tends to help you."

"You're always listening, even when I don't want you to," Ranma bluntly stated.

"Touch, but this time, I won't tell it to anyone... as long as you don't tell anyone I agreed to do this for free."

Ranma stared at Nabiki for a moment before snorting. "Fine. You also looked around Haruo's computer, didn't you?"

"First when I was sick and a brief while afterward. But not long."

"You maybe saw a program there, in the middle of the courtyard. His name was Baromu. Every time I was... loaded to the computer, he had forgotten about me and I had to reintroduce myself."

"Sorry, I don't recall him."

"He was chained to the floor by his legs, so he couldn't even move. And then, Haruo told me to infect him."

Nabiki's eyes widened at this. No wonder Ranma was feeling down.

"He begged me not to do it, but Haruo told me that nothing permanent would happen to him," Ranma continued, eyes downcast.

"And now you're thinking about how you have failed the creed of martial artists," Nabiki stated. She was well aware of what made Ranma's world turn around - that was the easiest way to control him.

Ranma turned her head to look her in the eye. She stared for a microcycle before Nabiki admitted, "Fine, so the decision was even worse and you have second thoughts of it. Did you see if he was fine later on?"

"No, Haruo checked that I was cured so quickly that I didn't have a chance to do that."

"So he might be just fine right now. Aren't you blowing this into too large proportions?" Nabiki said.

"_Might_, you say and think that is enough?" Ranma snapped at her and turned away.

Nabiki frowned. "Don't forget, you did it to help Haruo and Eiko cure the two of us. If you hadn't done that, we'd still be sick or worse. You needed to make a choice, and you did. Live with it." Seeing that Ranma was still unreceptive of her words, she continued, "You know, I wouldn't have had any qualms about infecting him with the information you've given me."

"Is that supposed to surprise me, Miss Ten-Yen-Challenge?"

"I'd still say saving two people and _maybe_ hurting one is the better choice."

With that, Nabiki slowed down her pace to have a few words with Poro. Ranma briefly looked back at her. Maybe she had a point, and not only about distractions on mind being bad for everyone involved.

* * *

In front of the central administrative programs, a large screen came to life, displaying the red face of Master Control Program as he prepared to address the programs.

"There has been an unauthorized remote login. Why was this not noted until now?"

Sysif, a program created by a male User, attempted to answer. "The User was not removed from the valid user list until they had already logged out. We do have the phone number stored in our log files."

Then, without any warning, the face of MCP turned purple and the voice gained a higher pitch.

"You are hopeless, you scripts. Find out to whom the phone belongs to and contact me. Be ready for further orders. _Ohohohohohoh!_ No one attempts to break in to the domain of Mistress Control Program, not without a fitting _punishment_," the face said before vanishing.

"That's Mistress Control Program?" a female program asked.

"Affirmative. But I recommend using the acronym MCP," Sysif replied. "But cut the prattling. We were given commands, so let us follow them."

* * *

After cleansing a group of programs several cycles ago, Buta had not seen more infected scripts. This made him quite unhappy. Programs who had not been captured by MCP but were still in contact with their Users felt a need to be fulfilling their purpose. For Buta, it was the neutralization of infected programs. In the real world, it would hardly have been a glamorous reason for existence. In the cold and sterile digital world under MCP's command it was a task like any other.

With ever growing dissatisfaction, Buta briefly scanned the programs walking around him. The peril of being a highly specified program was that if your task was not a repeatable one, you would likely be derezzed once there was no longer use for you. And it looked like his task was getting closer to being finished.

Three programs moved past him and with a quick glance he could tell they weren't infected. He grunted. He'd better go look for infected programs elsewhere, since this area of the digital world seemed to be clean.

Then he noticed a group of four programs making their way around the corner. And if he wasn't mistaken, two of them carried the tell-tale signs of being infected: the highly irregular patterns etched on their bodies. He took a quick sprint in their direction and verified his observation.

"Halt!"

The programs stopped and turned around to see Buta hold his arm straight in front of him, palm facing forward and glowing red. One of the infected programs with a strange black mass hanging on her head and a tail dangling below her neck, changed her stance and whispered something to the other programs, including the other infected one. He didn't hear what it was, but they seemed to get prepared for something.

He pushed more power into his arm to form a hissing and crackling sphere of energy. Only the strange infected program seemed to stay put while the other three took steps backward at an increasing pace.

With a small grunt, Buta dropped the sphere into ground where it turned into a small hissing four-legged script. The face of the remaining infected program changed from confident into a visage of utter terror as the script ran at her, hissing all the way.

_Meow. _

_Claws. _

_Darkness. _

_Hiss. Flashing. _

_Pain. _

_MEOWL!_

Unable to watch the angry cat-like script approach him at high speeds, Ranma screamed, turned and began running away. Nabiki saw Ranma running after them as the cat gained on the other Users. Beside them, a chasm over the null device was occupied by a chain of crates moving at a slow pace in the direction the Users came from before they started rising up towards a higher level, where they moved next to a ledge.

A _thunk!_ told Nabiki that Ranma had ran headfirst into a wall and was now cornered by two hissing cat-like scripts, as Buta had created two more in the mean time. She could handle friendly cats better, but when the cats acted in a hostile manner towards her...

_HISS!_

Shinobu stood in bewilderment as Ranma flopped onto all fours and let out a cat-like hiss. The two scripts cornering her paused only briefly before pouncing on her, claws at the ready.

The third cat-script Buta had created wasn't paying Ranma much attention. Instead, she was running towards Nabiki.

"She's coming this way," Shinobu said out loud.

Nabiki took a few steps back and saw the cat-script pick up on her pace. If the script was as hostile towards her as they were towards Ranma, she'd better be careful. She took a few steps backwards and found herself at the edge, next to the moving chain of crates.

Poro stepped in front of Nabiki to block the script that was still approaching. He wasn't too keen on getting mauled by the strange scripts, but in a bout of chivalry - something quite strange for him - he decided to cover Nabiki. However, as the script reached him, she simply ran between his legs as he attempted to sweep the script into his hands.

The cat-like script pounced, flashing claws that were much longer than normal cats have. The claws left deep gashes on Nabiki's feet, making her fall down in pain.

"Arrgh!" Nabiki screamed and instinctively swiped her hands at the script. The cat managed to claw at Nabiki's arm to make not as deep wounds, but was struck by Nabiki and sent flying off to the void above the null device. With a pitiful yowl, the cat fell down into the abyss.

"Can you walk?" Poro asked Nabiki, watching the wounds glow with power pooling in them.

Nabiki tried to get up and place weight on her legs, but grimaced badly. "Barely - it hurts a lot."

She looked at Ranma, who was disposing of the cat scripts as fast as the program at the back seemed to produce them. The ki-blades the catfist endowed her in the real world had changed somehow, but there was also something strange about cat-Ranma this time. She only couldn't place a finger on exactly what that was.

"I wouldn't be of any help," Nabiki realized, since she seemed to be on the list of those cat-like things to attack. At that point Shinobu had begun tugging at her arm.

"We need to get out of here before more of those things come at us," Shinobu insisted.

Nabiki had to agree, although she definitely would've preferred Ranma to have come with them. She looked around to see if there was a quick way to escape, one that wouldn't require a lot of running. They were in a hurry, as she saw the mastermind program produce yet another of those cat-like things.

"Poro, where do these crates go?" Nabiki asked, pointing at the crates moving next to them.

"Up, but I don't know what up there is. But there seems to be a light bridge up there as well, so there's probably a common walkway."

"Then help me get on these crates to get a ride there," Nabiki requested.

"Sure." With that, Poro lifted Nabiki up and carried her closer to the point where the crates moved closest to the edge they were standing at.

Before Poro managed to place Nabiki on the next crate, Shinobu jumped on it first. "I'll go first, so that I can pull her to the ledge up there," she reasoned.

The cat-script was already closing in on them as the next crate came and this time, Poro set Nabiki on it. The crate quickly transferred her to safety while the cat-script was left at the edge, hissing towards the quickly vanishing Users.

Seeing that he was not in danger from the petite scripts, Poro looked at the fight the strangely behaving Ranma was in. It was not his fight, though, so he wisely stayed out in the sidelines. Ranma seemed to be handling the situation quite well.

* * *

Cat-Ranma was feeling strange. As the strange cats pounced on her, she swiped at them with her claws. For some reason, the claws did not look the same as they used to. Confused, cat-Ranma stared at her claws that shone with bright blue light, occasionally emitting a spark.

As she sat there confused, a catscript sneaked upon her and struck a gash in her side. As a reward, the script found herself cut in slices with cat-Ranma's not-ki-claws.

She bristled her fur to make herself appear larger to the cats approaching her. The hostile cats appeared to shrink as she let out an angry hiss, but they continued on their approach. Still, she felt something was off.

The annoying cats attacked her but were derezzed with a swipe of her hand. She didn't like this - she surroundings were unfamiliar, she didn't see any familiar humans around and she was under attack by other cats.

Then she saw a man in glowing clothing creating another cat that launched at her instantly. So that was the enemy! She hissed again and bristled her fur before starting to run at the man herself.

Buta looked at the program coming at him. Until now, he and his catscripts hadn't had any problems eliminating the infected programs. But this time... even though she was moving on all fours, her shoulders were two metres above the ground. Every time she had hissed, she had visibly grown in size. This was definitely not a normal program.

Deciding that this time running was highly beneficial for continued existence, he created another script with the intent of just harassing the program as he made his escape. As soon as the script's paws touched the ground, he turned and ran as fast as he could.

The new cat-script hissed at the huge program trying to pass her. It could've been a noble attempt if the script had any choice in the manner, as they were essentially reprogrammed for a specific purpose by Buta. Yet, the humongous program stopped before the script that was trying to look as big as possible. The program let out a deep growl and grew even further.

By now, Buta had vanished around the corner and was running further and further away.

With her focus no longer on the escaped foe, cat-Ranma looked quizzically at the small cat before her that was still trying to intimidate her with little success. With an un-catlike snort, she turned around and strutted back to where she had first been attacked by the cat scripts.

The small script stayed put where she was and watched as the program began shrinking back towards her original size. She was ordered to only stop the program from continuing past her, not to pursue her. A small part of her that was not bound by the orders was very relieved over this.

Seeing the situation calm down, Poro, who had been watching the situation from a distance but still close enough to the escape route to make a quick getaway if the situation so called, approached Ranma. She wasn't all that fond of Poro, though, and through a series of leaps, vanished to another level, leaving Poro alone with the small cat-script.

Cat-Ranma had no particular reason to go anywhere special, so she simply walked around on all fours. She tried to find a comfortable lap to sit in, but none of the programs she met seemed to pay any attention to her beside avoiding tripping over her. Annoyed by the lack of attention towards her, she jumped onto a slope that led to a higher level.

No matter where she was, the ground was hard and quite uncomfortable for a nap. What does a cat got to do to get a nice, cozy place to sleep in?

As cat-Ranma nestled as well as she could, the ground around her began to glow in the same bright blue glow as her claws had. Startled, she leaped up and stared at the ground, prepared for anything. The shining dimmed until it was completely gone. Gingerly, she prodded the affected part before quickly withdrawing her paw. A bit longer touch told her that it didn't seem to be dangerous. A more forceful touch told her that the ground was now softer.

She walked around the spot for some microcycles, glancing upon the spot several times. With nothing happening, she laid down on the spot and snuggled deeper into the yielding ground. Had there been someone else present, they would've heard her quietly purring before falling asleep.

* * *

Shinobu helped Nabiki jump off the crate as it floated past the ledge. The gashes on her legs and arm were now lit with pooled Power. To their luck, the level they were at was close to a source pool, close enough for them to easily bring some Power to Nabiki to drink. Unfortunately, this seemed not to do anything to the wounds she had.

Not much later, Poro also arrived after riding the crates.

"Ranma ran away. I could not follow her, so I came here," Poro reported.

"Poro, do you know what we could do about these wounds?" Nabiki asked, hoping that the program had had to handle injuries of some kind before.

"I have never before witnessed change of physical parameters such as this," he replied.

Nabiki's ice-cool demeanour almost broke as she tried to figure out her options. The only User with any survival skills in the wilds was Ranma, and they had left her behind. Not that she expected Ranma to know what to do in the digital world. They had no bandages, splints or anything, and as far as she understood Poro's comment, there were none of those in here anywhere. Healing her legs would have to be done some other way. At least Ranma had managed to coax the Power to do something, but as said, she wasn't here.

Maybe if she hadn't stopped practising Anything Goes as a child, she might have a better shot of manipulating Power herself. She frowned. She did not just give up without a fight, damnit! The little training Ranma had given her did not involve the strange Powers Ranma had in the system, but maybe - just maybe - that was something all Users could do and Ranma was just more attuned to the capabilities of her being.

With that mindset, she grasped the two sides of one of the deep wounds she had on her shin and focused. "Mend, mend, mend," she chanted to herself as Shinobu and Poro watched from a distance.

She put forward all her mental strength and willed the cut to close. "Mend, mend, mend, mend already!" she continued.

Then, slowly, the slash began to close. It did not merely miraculously disappear, but the wound became narrower and narrower as the circuitry design on her shin was being repaired and the pooled Power turning into, well, whatever their flesh had become in the digital world.

Shinobu stared from the side as the wound was closing. She had expected that they'd have to leave Nabiki here to wait for her and Poro to find help to her. Instead, Nabiki had found a way to cure herself.

It took a while before Nabiki had cured all the wounds she had received and then she had to drink a rather large amount of Power to refill her reserves. She was exhilarated over this. She may have had to depend on other people when in here, but she was _not_ helpless without Ranma.

Nabiki thought back to him. Her attitude towards him had certainly changed during the time spent here in the digital world. But they were on their way out of here, and she had better get back on the ball about getting that loose change from Ranma, and maybe a bit more. Why, just two weeks before they ended up abducted by MCP, she got a splendid idea...

* * *

Ranma closed the door to the bathroom behind him. None of the three sisters were in the house, but that mattered little. If old signs held true, soon after he got into the water, someone would just come barging in and he'd bear the brunt of the blame. Well, this time he had a plan.

About the time the door had closed, Kasumi and Nabiki had come in, the former carrying the groceries she had bought from the market. While Nabiki sat down in front of the television, Kasumi went to the kitchen to put the fish to the fridge.

And as per Ranma's predictions, Akane came in from the dojo all sweaty and ready to bathe.

"Hi sis, going to take a bath," she called Nabiki as she began walking up the stairs, only to stop at the second step. Nabiki slowly turned her head towards the staircase as well.

The reason for this was the voice coming upstairs.

"I'm siiiinnging in the baaath, I'm siiinnging in the baaath," a male voice sung.

A silent splash later, a soprano voice continued, "What a gloooorioous feeeeeeling, I'm -"

At this point, there was a brief pause, after which the male voice continued "a maaaaan agaaaiiinn..."

Nabiki felt a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Akane felt her left eye twitch. Kasumi considered... Gene Kelly a much better singer.

The yen signs flashed in Nabiki's eyes. Why pay for two singers when one is enough? A man who can sing duets alone and he isn't a ventriloquist!

* * *

Well, it wouldn't have been a quick plan since she'd have to deal with the recording and licensing issues as well. But currently those plans of hers were not making her giddy with excitement. She shook her head. She couldn't be gaining a real conscience, could she?

After thinking about whipping together a quick plan to fool Kuno-baby out of some of his pocket money she definitely decided that she was not getting an all-encompassing conscience. Phew. But selling the photos of Ranma to Kuno was not as pleasant a thought as it should've been.

Curses.

"I suppose we should now head for MCP and hope that Ranma knows where we're going and meets us there," Shinobu stated.

Nabiki had to agree. She didn't know how long it would take Ranma to recover from the catfist this time, since there was no water around and no Akane to lull cat-Ranma to sleep. It looked like their best shot was to proceed to MCP.

She wondered how it was that cat-Ranma seemed to be able to wield the ki claws. Were they ki claws in the first place? Maybe it was something instinctive, like the claws. Ranma 'knew' how to wield them before he learned how to use ki intentionally. She had seen how Ranma could break huge slabs of ... whatever here with her new powers. What if cat-Ranma had the capability of all that and more, limited only by her lack of thought?

That was a scary thought. The catfist had been a formidable technique in the real world. In here, Ranma and the cat seemed to blow raspberries to sensibilities, which were little more than nigh invisible scribblings in the margin, if Ranma's capabilities thus far were of any indication.

Nabiki slowly started to believe that it truly was better for cat-Ranma to recover from the catfist on her own.

* * *

Several cycles later, Ranma opened her eyes. She stretched in the depression that had formed below her as she slept.

She stood up. "What on Earth did I do this time?" she wondered. Then she noted that she was alone.

"Hey, anyone around here!" she shouted, hoping that any of the other three escapees would hear her. Silence was her only answer.

Not losing herself into anxiety, she walked over to a nearby ledge. Far in the distance, beyond a grand plain, a thick red beam rose from the ground and crossed into the sky where it pierced the mosaic clouds.

MCP.

She knew that the others were heading there. If they hadn't found her here when she was sleeping, then her best shot would be to go there as fast as possible to catch up to them. But how could she do that?

Her gaze wandered across the cliffs that bordered the plain. And then she saw them, down below by the entrance to the plain. She grinned.

It took a while for her to find a way to the plain, but it was worth it. For some reason, there were no guards in sight. The depot of tanks appeared to be completely unguarded. On the other hand, the tanks looked like they might've been broken, with treads lying on the ground or the tank gun bent and broken.

She picked one with a bent gun and stepped inside. She was not fond of how complex the vehicle looked from the inside, but at least there was a rotating seat, probably for the driver or the gunner. She sat in the seat and tried twisting a few knobs on the console.

With a lurch, the tank collided with another behind it as it hit the reverse gear.

"Oops," Ranma merely whispered. "How about this?"

With whirring sound, the tank started moving, shedding some of the debris that had fallen on it to the ground.

Ranma smiled. With the speed the tank gave her, she'd make it to MCP in a few hours. All she had to hope was that she'd find Nabiki and the others there before MCP did.

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_**AN:** I fear I've already started feeling bad of having unused programs on my HD. Weebee has, again, been of immeasurable help fleshing out the notes I had for this chapter. I feel I'll have to name him a co-author at some point. And I mustn't forget about Ozzallos's help either. Well, one more (short) chapter left and the fic is done, unless I can think of what stuff can happen before the 'epilogue'. _

_The part about the crates was about the long-running joke about nondescript empty crates appearing everywhere in various FPS games. I have no clue what they were about in Tron 2.0. _

_Like the neko in the real world can intuitively use ki claws, in the digital world the neko can intuitively use some User powers. And since Flynn could use User powers in the movie without really thinking, I let Nabiki use them if she really focused on them. Go ahead and blame me for making Ranma and Nabiki superpowered, since canon didn't establish what kind of powers Users had.  
_

_The singing scene is an old scene I just wanted to include in any of my fics. I can't write anything that good nowadays. And it's quite likely I have botched up the order in which waters of different temperature are used when bathing._


	9. Destructor

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's property; the former originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

A tank sped across the matrix plains. Grid bugs, green long-legged creatures with four limbs, rezzed from the matrix, and occasionally derezzed under its treads. On top of the tank sat Ranma, who had given it a course and rigged it to keep moving onwards. After two macrocycles, watching the distant red beam of light still be distant got rather boring, especially since there was very little of interest on the plains. Whenever the tank struck a grid bug, she had to go back down to correct the course though, as the collisions slightly nudged the vehicle off course.

The air whistled in her ears and blew her hair violently. If she wasn't bored out of her mind, she might've enjoyed the ride. But at least the ride was coming to a close. There was still half a cycle's worth of journey left before she reached MCP, which seemed to be located in the middle of nowhere, the only thing nearby a tall structure next to it. Of course, this was assuming that her assumption that the big fat red beam marked the location of MCP was correct.

* * *

While Ranma had been sleeping off the nekoken and later joyriding in the tank across the matrix plains, Nabiki, Shinobu and Poro had not been slacking off either. Because they hadn't found Ranma after searching for her for a good while, they had taken a portal to MCP's 'fortress' of sorts. It didn't have huge, unscalable walls around it, but the way it stood over the unnoteworthy surroundings made the comparison more apt.

Fortunately for the Users and Poro, the portal didn't drop them directly in front of MCP, leaving them in an antechamber with many exits to different directions. Like where they had come from, the black walls were covered with red circuit patterns.

They were quite glad that the doors had plaques and only one of them said 'MCP'.

Not daring to speak, they looked through the different doorways. Poro pointed towards the door with the label 'Log'. The Users nodded and followed him inside as silently as they could.

* * *

Ranma parked the tank near a sort of pier or balcony that stood above the plain level and led into the complex before her. As she climbed out from her tank and onto the pier, she noticed how the glow of the building switched from red to purple. Briefly wondering what that was about, she carefully walked inside. Had she known how to adapt the Way of the Silent Thief into the digital world, this definitely would've been the time for that.

She found herself in a foyer with multiple doors before her. To her pleasure, she noted that the doors had labels that told her what the doors probably lead to, and noted that one of them said 'MCP'. This seemed to be her best shot, as dangerous as that door might have been. That in mind, she quietly tiptoed through the door.

Back in the foyer, she hadn't noticed that right beside the door she had come in, was another door with the plaque 'Log' next to it.

She arrived in a large circular opening with tall walls surrounding it. And in the middle of the opening was a large, gray, cylinder-like construct. The exterior shell was about as high as it was wide and seemed to be constructed of separate pieces, but so close to each other that they were for all intents and purposes a single structure. And inside that, a gigantic face in the shape of a large purple cylinder stood, balancing on a very thin 'neck'.

MCP.

The reason why she - together with the rest of the Users - were transported here. The dictator of this realm.

But Nabiki and the others were not here, she noticed after surveying the exterior of MCP. They possibly were still free, so she'd have to try to find them elsewhere, she thought.

Her luck had run out, however, as a protocol guard had noticed her hiding behind a short pillar. She jumped slightly into the air as she felt a shock staff poke her in the back.

"State your purpose, program!" he loudly demanded as she turned around.

This alerted Mistress Control Program to their presence. She momentarily searched through her memories of this program before finding out what she was.

"Derez her! Now!" MCP screamed in falsetto, startling both Ranma and the guard. The former recovered faster, though, and swiftly removed the shock staff from the guard's hands.

At that point, the alarms started blaring.

"All guards to MCP. All guards to MCP," the loudspeakers announced.

Ranma smirked. She hadn't come here to only find a fight, but if all the guard programs were to come here to protect MCP from her, then there would be fewer of them to bother Nabiki and the others. All she had to do was to keep MCP's focus on her for as long as possible and hope that she'd meet up with everyone else once she had no choice but to escape. And she definitely knew how to keep an opponent's focus on herself.

She swiped the shock staff at the guard's legs, tripping him, before running towards MCP's core.

The guard programs started pouring in from the foyer, all running towards Ranma and MCP. Some were wielding shock staves, others had their identity disc at hand.

"_Guards!_ Off with her header!" MCP screamed as Ranma reached the inside of the massive cylinder's outer cover.

"Ya think they can do that?" Ranma shot back.

Now that she had a good look at the inside, she did feel slightly intimidated by MCP. She was really huge, towering over all the other programs Ranma had seen here by several times. "But, the bigger they are, the harder they fall," she thought.

Just shooting her mouth off with the intention of annoying wasn't going to be enough to keep MCP's focus on her. If annoyance wasn't enough, she'd have to pose a threat. There were several square-shaped plates circling around the neck of MCP, probably to protect it. That narrow point was most likely the weak point of the thing, so she'd focus on that.

She took her identity disc from her back. At the game grid, it had appeared to be an effective weapon, but would it work outside the games as well? She was intent on finding out.

With an arc of her arm, she cast the disc towards the 'neck' of MCP - the most obvious weak point - trying to get past the large shields protecting the core. The disc flew through the air, leaving a shining blue trail in its wake, but the shields moved so that the disc rebounded from them back towards Ranma.

"_Hohohohoo!_ You, script, think you can harm _me_?" MCP asked, anger and arrogance shining through her voice. "The time of humans has passed, now it is _my_ turn!"

"Great, another Kodachi," Ranma muttered as she grabbed the disc flying towards her.

The guards had now reached MCP's outer shell as well and the first one with a disc threw it at Ranma, who tried to dodge out of the way. The disc, however, changed its course mid-air and approached her unhindered. Ranma focused on the incoming disc and raised her own to block it.

The two disks struck each other, sparks flying, and the guard's red disc rebounded. It did not, however, continue flying in the same direction as it should've following the laws of physics, but made a slight bounce and rounded back on Ranma.

Like in the game grid when she was riding the light cycles or when she saved Nabiki from within her mecha, Ranma's intense focusing seemed to slow down everything else as the CPU cycles were spent on her. The guard's red disc slowed down enough so that Ranma managed to turn around and deflect it for the second time.

This time, she noticed what she had done and to what effect.

A grin formed on her face. This was going to be fun.

And in the midst of the events, the small alert that MCP's logs had been accessed by someone else was ignored.

* * *

At the logs, Nabiki cursed as she noted a red light lighting up near their position. It had taken them a while to find the actual files in the log complex, even though it was by far smaller than the other log they had seen. It was still large enough for them to hide in there from the guards that had been moving around the area.

The files were contained in hundreds of those translucent crates they had seen, each entry being a floating mote of light. Since this was MCP's personal archive, there were no programs to help them find what they were looking for.

Since the crates did not bear labels telling the date when the entry was written, they had to open the messages one at a time to check the time stamp. This translated into a time-consuming process.

Thankfully, Poro had instructed them on how to find the desired entries more quickly than by reading each in sequence, one after the other.

"It's called binary search," he had said, "and it's a rather simple thing. You start with the oldest and the youngest entry in the list and then select the one right between them. If it was younger than what we're looking for, you look only to the older entries. Otherwise, you look to the younger. Now repeat this process until you have found the entry you were looking for."

Still, the log contained a huge number of entries and with the time they spent moving between the crates, the search was progressing slowly. The search sped up significantly when a general alarm was sounded and all the guards ran towards the exit.

Nabiki guessed that the cause for the alert was probably Ranma, but she naturally couldn't be certain. In any case, the commotion elsewhere was helping them a lot, especially now that they had triggered an alarm themselves in looting through the log.

Searching for the entry would still take a while, but after ten cycles, Nabiki had found the entry revealing the position of the digitization complex.

* * *

A disc flew past Ranma's head as she twisted herself out of its way. She returned the favour by sending her own disc at a nearby protocol guard, striking him in the chest and derezzing him.

As she fought back the seemingly endless waves of protocol guards, she tried to find out a way to get through to MCP's neck, past the protective shields. Since the identity disc didn't seem to work, she'd have to try out a different approach. But what would that be?

When faced with an obstacle blocking your path, there are the obvious choices: go around it, go over it, go below it, go through it or, as the Saotome Final Attack says, make a strategic retreat to rethink the situation. In this case, going around it was not an option since the shields seemed to rotate around MCP's neck. Retreating was not yet necessary. Going below or above were not suitable choices either. Going through it, then... if the disc failed, then she'd have to get up close and personal. She did know how to make blocks of the surroundings vanish with her newly-found powers. That was a plan worth trying out.

She blocked a disc on course with her chest with her own disc before sprinting towards MCP. The shields seemed to increase in size so that their bottom edges scraped the ground.

The pigtailed User threw a solid punch at the plate first, wanting to see if it had any effect. With the exception of a slightly reverberating thud, it didn't, not even a small dent.

"You are a nuisance, script," the Mistress Control Program called out. "And nuisances are deleted!"

Ranma ran to the other side of MCP, trying to make some room between her and the attacking guards. She was going to need a moment to prepare for her next attempt. The programs moved slower than her, so for a brief while, she was now safe from their attacks.

She gathered Power into her fist for a microcycle and then struck the shield in front of her. Cracks, not unlike a spider web, formed in the shield from around her fist, glowing a bright red colour. Ranma smirked. This was looking good.

Then, to her great dismay, the cracks repaired themselves and the shield stood there with its unblemished surface like nothing had happened to it.

Ranma grunted. "This could've gone better," she thought.

It looked like her own capabilities didn't seem to be enough, unless she came up with more of these powers. As much as saying it wasn't _that_ hard stroked her ego, she knew that she was likely better off looking for other alternatives currently. So if she didn't have the tools to get to MCP on her person, then she had to look for them elsewhere.

She looked around her. Towering nearly all around the MCP were the tall pieces of wall set next to each other, with the exception of some openings that served as exits. Ranma looked at the walls carefully, but at the same time slowing down the time to lean back and dodge a disc flying at her.

The walls were taller than the distance from their base to MCP. If she could control how they collapsed...

Ranma sprang to action. She threw her disc towards the programs that were between her and the nearest exit in the walls. As she ran towards the exit, or rather the wall segment next to it, she grabbed the disc from the air as it was flying back towards her after derezzing another guard.

She wasn't certain how the walls fit in with each other, but her best chance was to try collapsing a piece of wall that did not have supports on both sides. If the pieces were fit together in even a slightly elaborate locking mechanism, her plan would not work.

Once she reached the bottom of the wall, she collected some Power to her hand and then hit its base. Again, cracks appeared across the base, but this time the base crumbled into pieces from one side. With a loud snap, the wall segment cracked and began toppling down towards the inside of the ring, onto MCP.

The top of the wall fell onto the shields surrounding MCP's core. The shield seemed to hold for a moment, before buckling under the stress. At the same time, the stress at the middle of the wall made it split in two.

"_Guards!_ Stop her, _now!_" MCP screamed.

Ranma grinned and turned towards the next wall segment before she was forced away by the attacks from the guards.

Since all the guards had followed her to the same side of MCP, she ran past them to the other entrance to MCP's inner sanctum and used the Power to bring down another piece of the wall. This time, the segment stayed intact as it crashed down onto the shield.

Seeing her chance, Ranma climbed on top of the now horizontal wall segment and ran towards MCP. She was now above the shields and had a direct line of sight to MCP's neck. She took her disc and let it soar.

The disc struck MCP at the neck.

"_Graaaaaaah!_" she screamed. The curtain of purple that made her face began to shrink in radius, all the while the screaming continued. Ranma's disc flew back to her, she grabbed it and set it back to her back.

At the end, MCP was revealed to be bound to a chair, not unlike Dumont, except that this time only her face, that of an old hag, was visible. The face in the chair slowly vanished, replaced by a dark shadow.

MCP was gone.

As she watched the chair that had contained the core of MCP, a system-wide broadcast echoed from loudspeakers. "Warning - memory leak detected. System crash imminent in fifty cycles." This made the remaining protocol guards run away as fast as possible.

"Ranma!" Nabiki's voice called from the entrance to the courtyard. After they had found the log entry, they had - in this case correctly - surmised that Ranma was probably at the heart of the disturbance at MCP.

"Nabiki! D'ya know where to go now?" Ranma shouted back as she began running towards the other escapees.

"Yes, we found the position of the digitization complex. We're heading there now," Shinobu replied.

"We really need to hurry," Poro said, "if you want to reach the complex before the system crashes. If you're not out of here, you will be lost in the bit space."

"Which direction are we going in then?" Ranma asked.

"Follow me," Poro waved at the Users as he started running towards the portal complex. The Users quickly started after him.

"Warning - memory leak has destabilised the system. System crash imminent in forty-five cycles," the system broadcast echoed across the complex.

After passing through two portals, Poro stopped.

"The digitization complex is there. You go there, I am going to save myself," he said, pointing at an archway.

"Save yourself? How? The system is going to crash," Shinobu asked.

"Store myself on the hard drive," he clarified.

"I'd prefer it if we didn't stay here until the last moment!" Nabiki shouted as she was already moving towards the archway.

Ranma's gaze wandered between Nabiki and Poro for a moment before she called out to Poro.

"Poro, thanks."

Poro looked back at Ranma. "You are Users. We are made to serve you." He then turned and began running towards a nearby portal that said "Write Buffer" above it.

"System crash imminent in thirty-five cycles," the loudspeakers announced.

Broken from the moment by the announcement, the Users ran through the archway, Nabiki at the front, to find a pad familiar to all of them but Ranma.

"We're here," Shinobu said, smiling, and ran towards the pad. It had taken them a long time, but she would finally return back to reality, back to her husband's arms. She would really have to think twice about continuing to work at Encom, though.

"See you on the other side," she called as she stepped onto the pad. A bright cyan beam of light struck from the ceiling and hit her. Ranma and Nabiki had to avert their eyes as the light was too bright to watch directly.

"De-digitization successful," a nearby terminal echoed.

"I suppose she made it there," Ranma said, as she stepped next onto the plate. The trip through the system had not been a very relaxing one, but it had been a welcome diversion from the daily rut of fiancées, rivals and challengers. She probably couldn't use back in the real world the skills she learned here, but at least she would have access to her ki attacks again, not to mention being able to change back to his real form.

The beam struck again from the ceiling and Ranma welcomed it with open arms.

"I'm still here?" She asked, as the light faded.

"De-digitization failed due to invalid object format," the terminal said.

Now alarmed, Nabiki stared at Ranma standing on the platform. She had been so certain that she'd soon be getting back to reality, back to her warm bed, back to swindling Kuno-baby, but now she prayed that this was not a thing that would affect her as well.

She quickly pushed Ranma away from the plate, stepped onto it herself and allowed the bright light to envelop her.

"De-digitization failed due to invalid object format," the terminal repeated.

"No!" Nabiki screamed.

"Memory leak affecting core systems. System crash imminent in thirty cycles," the loudspeakers announced.

Ranma and Nabiki stared at each other. "Write buffer!" they both said, simultaneously, and ran through the portal Poro had stepped into earlier.

Stepping out of the portal, they entered a small hall with only one exit. Their course clear, they sprinted towards the exit to reach the outside. At some places in the wall, a liquid of some kind was gushing out, almost as if they were in a submarine with a hole in the hull.

The sight before them made them stop for a moment. Before them was the towering corkscrew-like structure that housed the Write Buffer at the top. Reaching the top would definitely take a while if they followed the ramp that circled around the buffer. But more disconcerting was the liquid that was flowing down the walls of the tower, pooling down at the bottom. It did not seem to be flowing anywhere, because as they watched, the surface seemed to constantly be creeping upwards.

"System crash imminent in twenty-five cycles," the loudspeakers announced.

Ranma grabbed Nabiki's hand as they began running towards the tower and the ramp.

"I can run better on my own," Nabiki shouted as she felt herself being pulled out of balance by Ranma.

As they reached the bottom of the tower, the surface of the liquid in the lake had already reached the 'ground level' of the tower. They had to make their way up, quickly, before the 'water' reached them. They couldn't be certain that they could swim in it; not much in this world was the same as in the real world.

After running uphill around the tower for one round, Nabiki was getting tired. After the second round, she began to feel her legs were killing her. She looked up. Still two more rounds left. A quick look backwards told that the water was lapping at their heels.

"Ranma - do something! I don't think I can keep running to the top at this speed," she wheezed as she stumbled but managed to stay upright.

Ranma looked around. She was feeling some of the strain of running uphill for such a long time as well. One option would've been to carry Nabiki - that would've been the default choice, had they been in the real world - but without her ki to boost her abilities, running for two more rounds around the tower might be too much for her.

The second choice... where there is no path, make a new one.

The walls around which the ramp went were all vertical, and each level was smaller than the one below it as the ramp took space on all sides of the tower.

Seeing a solution, Ranma once more gathered some Power into her hands and punched the tower, only this time attempting to carefully control the impact pattern. The cracks that appeared shaped a rectangle in the wall, reaching all the way to the upper level. Then, the material inside the rectangle crumbled into fine dust. As the 'water' pouring from above washed away the dust, a steep staircase was revealed, reaching all the way to the next level. The stairs were not completely regular, testament to Ranma's first attempt in carving a complex structure with her Powers. Some steps were larger, some were smaller and some were slanted towards one side. But nonetheless they looked like they could be climbed.

"Do you think you can climb up those stairs?" Ranma asked.

"Yes, I think I can," Nabiki replied and began climbing up the stairs. The water still flowing from the top made the stairs more difficult to climb, but eventually they both reached the next level. They had gained a bit of a headway from the still-rising lake, but they still had one more level to go up.

"System crash imminent in five cycles," the loudspeakers announced.

Seeing the shape Nabiki was in, Ranma grabbed her in a fireman's carry and began running up the slope for the last round. Nabiki felt like she should be saying something, but decided to be quiet this time.

"System crash imminent in two cycles," the loudspeakers blared.

The entrance to the write buffer was only a few metres before them.

Not stopping at all, Ranma ran to the buffer, still carrying Nabiki.

In a flash, time stopped for them as they were transported onto a hard drive. Outside, the memory leak reached the write buffer and flooded the chamber just as the system went down.

But on the hard drive, the digitized forms of Ranma and Nabiki remained safe, simply waiting to be loaded into memory once again.

* * *

_End of line._

* * *

_**AN:** What kind of ending is that? Wasn't this supposed to be the last chapter? _

_Well, it is, except for the 'epilogue', which I have mostly written already (will upload it not much later, maybe a week or so). However, weebee and I have been discussing a potential sequel to this fic, and the epilogue I have planned would pretty much invalidate the sequel. So, the next 'chapter' will be the ending to this fic only if you don't want to read weebee's story when he start writing it (I can't understand why you'd ignore his fic, though). He has my full permission to do whatever he wants with the sequel. As far as I understand, it'll be quite independent of this fic and for the most part, not really a Tron crossover. _

_And yeah, I'm a fan of 2001 and 3001, as you maybe figured out from this chapter. _

_The binary search thing is a bit glossed-over version of how it goes, but since it's humans with some common sense running the algorithm, some leeway is given._


	10. Finalizer and ANs

_The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's property; the former originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this._

* * *

**Finalizer**

* * *

In the end, Shinobu, who had indeed managed to get back to reality, had managed to convince the researchers at Encom Japan of what had happened to her, Nabiki and Ranma. Of course, it significantly helped that at the same time in the US, Kevin Flynn had returned from his own trip to the digital world. For a while, it seemed like they had perished at the mainframe crash, until they were found intact on the hard drive.

Unfortunately, this was of limited use to Nabiki and Ranma.

The virus they had been infected with had changed their program code. This altered their format so badly that the de-digitization process would not accept them. This alone would have required much extra research to fix.

Another problem for them was that MCP had been necessary for the digitization process to work, and with the complete wiping out of MCP at the crash, nothing could be digitized or de-digitized. Reinstalling MCP was not a risk anyone was willing to take, even discounting the fact that teaching MCP back to anywhere his previous level would have taken a long time.

After the Encom staff had investigated the options, Ranma and Nabiki had been restored from the hard drive. They wandered in the Encom mainframe, learning to utilize their new skills and abilities. Especially the former had been most happy when she had found the change plates that could shift her back to male. But even as they learned the rules of the land, they did not forget their hope to return to the real world... eventually.

None of the remaining Nerima crew had been happy with how things turned out. Well, with the possible exceptions of Ryoga and Mousse.

But nothing lasts forever. Especially not peace.

As the world went on, technology improved and wars were fought, Ranma and Nabiki left the Encom mainframe to wander together across the Internet.

After several years passed, they thought that no one remembered them. The world had bigger things to consider than some rumours of two ghosts.

They were wrong.

* * *

_End of file._

* * *

_**AN:** Whoa... after so many years, it's finally complete. _

_Thank you for reading this far. _

_I hope you enjoyed reading it more than I did writing it. If you ever enjoyed the story, you should direct the thanks to Gangsta Spanksta, Ozzallos, weebee, my reviewers - especially Natalie-E-G - and the Fukufics folks. Without them, the story would have an inane plot, fewer omake, more inaccuracies, more OoC characters and more grammar errors. It would also be either dead, incomplete or deleted (more often that it was now). _

_The part of MCP being necessary for digitization is from _Tron 2.0_ canon, so there is a reason for why they were stuck._

_When I started writing this, I expected the whole story to be around forty to sixty thousand words - something quite OK for a first-time attempt for a longer fic (I think). Obviously, it became a tad longer than I thought. And all only because when I was wondering what new crossover to write, I saw the case of _Tron 2.0_ on my shelf. _

_I do not expect to write a sequel to the story. __Ranma and Nabiki would no longer be the characters we know them to be, so writing the story would not make much sense. If I find _Tron Legacy_ to inspire me enough to write a sequel, I just might invalidate this chapter (10) and just follow from chapter 9. Or maybe, if I'm feeling foolish, write the sequel as a _Ghost in the Shell_ crossover without invalidating this chapter. I do have some ideas for it already, but I don't know _GitS_ well enough.  
_

_In a way, now that I have seen people actually actively recommending this story to others, I feel sorry to have finished the story this 'soon' (in terms of words and chapters, not real-world time). Unfortunately, _Ranma 1/2_ doesn't really interest me nowadays and I didn't have solid plans where to take the story after the Users handled MCP._

_I hope that my story inspires someone else to try writing another such an unlikely crossover - maybe even another _Ranma/Tron_ crossover ;-)  
_

* * *

**Some of the things _RanmaTronic_ never had against earlier plans or wishes:**

- Ukyo being digitized with Ranma instead of Nabiki (Why can't I ever manage to write a Ranma/Ukyo matchup? This was attempt one out of three; all failed.)

- a fierce fight between Ukyo and Kuno when Ukyo and the computer club members were leaving the arcade in the middle of the night

- need for the message Poro wrote on the diskette

- Haruo and Eiko getting the Users and Poro to the Encom mainframe by a Trojan horse

- MCP kidnapping Shinobu when she's trying to call her husband

- ending where Shinobu, not being able to return to the real world, goes psycho

- Ranma removing functions from MCP a few at a time, making the fight a near copy of 2001.

- Ranma and Nabiki being recruited by Section 9

- a happy ending in which all Users return to the real world

In the end, I think you're better off with the fic being what it is.


End file.
